Still Waters: A Robot's Life
by RedPBass
Summary: A lone survivor of the massacre at the Mahora Festival back in 2003, Tanaka Unit 1125 wakes up to something new several years down the line. Contains OCs. Takes place during Still Waters 3. Chapter 10 is up now; one more to go!
1. Chapter 1

_Battery Recharging…89%...90%...Restarting System._

_Power Source Diagnostics…43%...76%...100% Power Source Online. Checking Parameters_

_Systems Check…25%...48%...70%...100%_

_Body Structure Diagnostics…24%...28%...65%...88%...100% Minor Damage To Visual Recording System. Minor Damage To Lower Right Torso. Major Damage To Upper Central Torso._

_Com Systems Check…45%...79%...100% Hardware Not Found. Network Not Found. Communications Impossible. Switching To Personal AI._

_Restarting System._

_System Restarted. Scanning. Scanning Complete. _

_Warning: Error In Primary Hard Drive. Memory Unavailable, Switching To Backup Drive A._

_Launching OS._

_Welcome To Tanaka Systems, A Product Of Chao And Hakase Industries. Current Time Is 05:37:35 p.m. June 03, 2009 Plus Or Minus 3.569 Seconds. Current Location Unknown, Satellite Network Not Found._

He opened the covers over his ocular devices and registered green spots mixed with bits of blue before him. A quick check of his libraries revealed first that this was probably what is commonly known as a 'forest canopy', and second, his libraries were incomplete; much of his storage space had been damaged or destroyed, possibly due to the moisture that had collected on his damaged frame, which itself seemed to have been in this spot for quite some time if one were to judge by the moss that had grown on his external covering.

_Basic plant life found on external layer. AutoRemoval initiating._

The electric shock that shot through his outer skin killed the moss that covered him almost instantly. He briefly wondered what had occurred to allow his creators to simply leave him here long enough to grow moss, and then wondered who his creators were. Something seemed to be wrong with his memory.

_Scanning surroundings…scan complete. No hostile lifeforms detected. _

He sat up and swayed for a moment before the AutoBalance system kicked in and he righted himself. Almost immediately a nearby squirrel dashed up a tree and chattered furiously at him from the end of a branch.

_Scanning lifeform…scan complete. Healthy specimen of __**Sciurus lis. **__No threat detected__**. **__Image and video saved for future reference._

After brushing off the dead moss, he got slowly to his feet, trusting in the AutoBalance system to do its job properly. For a moment, he considered switching over to manual, but then the system kicked in and he stood up straight. Next, he spent several minutes scanning the area more thoroughly in an attempt to replace some of the valuable data that had been lost. Unfortunately, he was unable to put a name to most of what he saw, and was therefore forced to label the various objects as 'Unknown Deciduous Tree A' or 'Unknown Bush B'. Soon he had every nearby life form catalogued, along with levels of O2 and other similar information. With that done, he ran some simulations to determine what he should do next. First things first, he needed to contact headquarters. However, after several minutes spent with a variety of frequencies, his logic module announced that headquarters had either been overrun or simply ceased to exist during his time offline, as he detected no signals from them among the mass of signals his receiver detected. However, it was certainly possible that his transmitter was malfunctioning as well. A moment later, the emergency beacon that had begun transmitting when he had come back online abruptly cut out in a flash of static as sparks shot out from the side of his head, where the transmitter was located.

_Transmitter offline, unable to contact headquarters. Moving to next item. Severe damage to outer skin. Suggested course of action: obtain clothing to hide damaged appearance until repairs can be undertaken. Suggested direction of travel: North Northwest._

He started walking.

* * *

Inoue Ai was a hard worker. Intelligent, motivated, and dreaming of a future in the theatre; and as the newest member of the Acting Club, she was doing her best, practicing every day in the woods with the wildlife as an audience and a stick as a prop. Today, she was doing her favorite play, Romeo and Juliet, playing each part in turn as well as she could, though her recollection of many of the lines was fuzzy at best. After a fantastic sword fight between Mercutio and Tybalt in Act III, she threw herself to the ground, mortally wounded.

"Courage, man! It can't hurt much," she said, her voice not unlike that of a teenage boy.

"No, it's not so deep as a well or as wide as a church door, but it will serve," she replied in a light hearted, yet more masculine, tone. "Look for me tomorrow, and you'll find a grave man." She grinned a cocky grin at an imaginary Romeo. "Plague on both your houses! Dogs, rats, mice, cats to scratch…uh…villains…" she consulted the script and frowned, scratching the side of her head as she sat up.

"What is this supposed to mean? It's so weird," she complained aloud to the empty clearing as she dropped out of character. She was so distracted by the script that what happened next almost surprised her enough to scream. Almost.

A crackling buzz echoed across the small clearing as what appeared to be a very large naked man stepped through the bushes on the other side. His skin was covered in rips and tears, and part of his face had been ripped and burned off to reveal a metal skeleton beneath, like something out of that old time-traveling-robot movie from the '80s. He was also covered in dirt and dead moss.

Ai scrambled back until she bumped into a tree as the robot-man approached to within six feet of her and stopped. He tilted his head downward with the accompanying whirr of servos and fixed her in place with his eerie robot stare.

"I need your clothes," he said in a monotone voice.

The girl blinked a couple times. "W-what?" 'Damn stutter...!' It always came back when she was nervous and not playing a character...

"I need your clothes," the robot repeated.

"W-w-why?" she asked, covering her chest with her arms.

"Suggested course of action: obtain clothing to hide external damage. I need your clothes."

Ai's jaw dropped as she thought about that for a moment. He wanted her clothes…to _wear_? The mere _thought_ of the big robot man in her school uniform was just…absurd.

"I…don't think they would fit you," she said after a moment, looking at the three-foot spread of his shoulders and his ridiculous height; she was tall for a girl, but not _that_ tall. The robot simply stood still for a moment, as if trying to process this bit of information. Another crackle of static burst out and it spoke again.

"I must obtain clothing."

"I-I…could help you?" she suggested warily. The robot paused again, this time for almost a full minute before he responded.

"That is acceptable. Obtain clothing immediately."

Ai took a deep breath to calm herself and rested her chin on her hand in thought for a moment, then circled the robot a few times to get a sense of his size, absently noting the way his head turned as he watched her. She noticed with an odd feeling of disquiet that his head could turn two hundred and ten degrees.

"I don't think I'll find anything your size in the normal stores…" she finally said. "Maybe the sewing club will have something. B-but hey, we don't even know each other's names yet. I'm Inoue Ai, what's your name?"

"Greetings Inoueai. I am Tanaka Unit 1125, currently running in autonomous mode."

"It's Inoue Ai, two words. Not 'Inoueai'," she said in mild annoyance now that she felt she had gained some tiny bit of control over the situation. "A-anyway… Tanaka-san, huh? Okay, Tanaka-san, you wait here. I'll get something for you and be back here in about an hour, okay?"

"Understood. Entering Sleep Mode." The robot suddenly slumped, but remained standing.

"Er…Okay," the girl said distractedly as she approached the still robot and gave it an experimental poke. It immediately whirred back to life.

"Sleep Mode: Cancel." Its head turned in that weird way it had, and its eyes focused on her face. "Greetings Inoueai. One hour has not passed. You have not returned with clothing," it stated with the occasional crackle of static, as if demanding the reason why.

"Ah…s-sorry, I was just testing something. Go back to sleep, I'll get your clothes now," she explained.

"Understood. Entering Sleep Mode." He slumped again, and she couldn't help but be weirded out by the whole situation as she left the clearing.

When Ai returned an hour and a half later, she found Tanaka-san in the same place she had left him.

"Hey, you still alive over there?" she asked. The robot man stirred when she called out.

"You are late," he stated simply.

"It took a while to find clothes that looked big enough…I had to borrow a jacket from the p.e. teacher," she explained as she held out the bundle she had brought along. The robot just looked at her in silence. "What, don't you know how to put on clothes?"

"Data not found. Much data was lost due to moisture damage. Perhaps data on 'clothing' was lost this way?" the robot suggested in its near-monotone voice.

The girl heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Okay then, hold out your arms, I'll help you put it on…"

Most of the clothes she had brought along were simply too small, but eventually she managed to get the robot man dressed. When she was finished, she stepped back to admire her work.

"Well, it's all really tight and Max-sensei will probably kill me if you rip his jacket, but I think you'll pass for a human if you stay out of sight and wear this hat. Oh, and keep your head down so people don't see your face," Ai said as she put a brown fedora hat on his head, messing up his hair and forcing it down so the hat would stay in place.

Tanaka-san buzzed for a moment before replying. "Thank you, Inoueai."

"It's Inoue Ai, two words, you know?" she repeated. "Anyway, come on. It looks like you got hurt somehow. I don't know anything about robots, but I do know a little about computers; I might be able to fix you up a bit. You can't stay in the dorms, but I know a guy who has a garage we could put you in. Does that sound okay?" she asked, her face brightened considerably by her smile.

"Understood."

* * *

**_Updated Author's Note 4/22/11:_**_ This is a minor edit of this chapter, but it's probably a good idea to read it anyway...though I guess you already have since I put this at the bottom of the page. Anyway, this story needed some editing and oh, I don't know, _A CONCLUSION, _so I decided to give it another shot._

_**(Original) Author's Note**: This is a story occurring during the events of Still Waters 3, which is not yet published at this time. Sadly, it will not be updated regularly, but instead as I find inspiration. Many characters will appear in both stories, and this will mostly serve as an introductory story to Still Waters 3, so pay attention! :)_


	2. Chapter 2

The next day after school when Inoue Ai returned to the garage where she had left Tanaka-san, she opened the side door and froze.

"Tanaka-san…! What are you doing!" He had taken all the tools and things from their proper places and laid them out on the floor during the day, and was now looking at her blankly.

"I require maintenance," he stated.

"I kn-kn-know that! B-but if you do this, nii-san will get mad!" she said as she scolded the robot. "W-well, Gotokuji's not really my brother, but I call him nii-san anyway," she explained as she began rounding up the tools. "We need to get you cleaned up, first," she finally said as she put the tools in a big pile on a workbench. "We can't open you up when you're covered in dirt and stuff, it'll just get inside and mess you up even more…"

"Understood."

The girl spent the next hour attempting to scrub the grime and dirt from the enormous robot's 'skin', but it seemed to be badly degraded and stained all over; the dirt had gathered in the rough spots and just wouldn't come out.

"Well…I guess that's the best I can do without pouring a bucket of bleach over your head," she said as her expression deepened into annoyance. "Not unless you can take off your skin, anyway," she added in a halfhearted manner, shrugging off such a weird thought.

"Understood," Tanaka said, and then began peeling it off, prompting Ai to turn quickly to face the other direction, red faced.

'It's not like I'm watching him undress or anything…' she shuddered at the thought, wondering what would become of her in the future if such bizarre thoughts continued.

"Operation completed." She forced herself to turn around, and found herself staring at him in awe. There before her stood Tanaka-san, sans skin, a big robot with metal plating covering parts of the torso, pelvis, and joints, and false muscles made of some bluish-white material, which seemed to take the place of normal human muscles. She didn't know much about anatomy, but overall he looked surprisingly human... Then he dropped his skin in her arms.

"Gya…!" she almost screeched as she dropped it to the ground, where it landed with the muffled sound of a pile of moist leather. "Duh-d-don't d-do that!"

"Understood." He just stood there, looking at her.

"Wh-what?" she asked after a moment, wondering what he wanted.

"Suggested course of action: proceed with cleaning the outer layer, then move on to repair and maintenance," he stated.

"O-okay. Just let me look at the damage here," she said hesitantly as she took a notebook and pencil from her bag. She took a deep breath and put on the character of a detective from a TV show she had seen the week before. He had seemed a fairly intelligent fellow, pleasant to speak with but with a sharp eye for detail. She sighed as the character's persona settled into place, and then approached the robot. "Ah…this is probably bad, isn't it?" she asked, pointing at the heavily damaged plate protecting the robot's upper torso.

"Severe damage to upper torso. Location includes memory banks, processors—"

"Okay, I understand," she interrupted as she scribbled a bit of information on the notepad. "Does this…come off?" She pulled lightly on the plate, and stepped back when a sudden click followed almost immediately and the plate hinged open, revealing the damage inside.

"It looks almost as if you were stabbed by something…" she said musingly as she looked. Indeed, whatever had stabbed him in the chest had been driven straight through the protective plates and into what looked to be several hard drives mounted side-by-side, and then on through a circuitboard of some type, only to stop when it hit the inside of the protective plate on the back of his torso.

"Correct. Primary target Sakurazaki Setsuna caused severe damage to torso."

"Wait, 'primary target'? Are you some killer robot?" the girl asked as the persona dropped and she scrambled backward in the narrow garage and bumped into the wall.

"Incorrect. I am Tanaka Unit 1125, a multipurpose prototype unit created for use by-by-by-data not found."

After a moment, Ai regained her courage and approached him again, slipping the detective's persona back on. "Then…who is Sakurazaki Setsuna?" she asked.

"Data not found."

Inoue Ai frowned as she considered that. "How long ago did that happen?"

"Data not found."

"Then how long were you in the woods?"

There was a moment of silence as one of the hard drives whirred and clicked alarmingly and then halted. "Last timestamp before coming online: 05:02:31 p.m. June 22, 2003."

"2003…you were in the woods for _six years_?" Ai exclaimed. "No wonder you're so damaged! You're lucky you're still working at all!" Honestly, there were far too many surprises today, she couldn't get into character at all.

Tanaka just stood there impassively.

"A-anyway, I'll get this cleaned," she said, gathering up the 'skin'. "Now stay quiet and don't bother anyone, ok?"

"Understood."

* * *

Later, after Ai had gone home to the dorm and thrown the skin into one of the washing machines, she climbed the stairs to her own room and plopped down on her bed with a weary sigh.

"What's wrong, Ai-chan?" her roommate, Miyoshi Youko, asked from where she sat crosslegged in a chair with her long white hair up in a ponytail as she watched TV on the small portable unit she had evidently picked up off of a street corner somewhere.

"Nothing, I've just been tired lately," Ai replied with an exhausted yawn. Youko-san was one of the few people she could drop all pretense around, and it was a great relief after a long day at school.

"Hmmmm~? Found a boyfriend, have we~?" Youko asked as she spun the chair around.

"Wuh-wh-_what_? N-no!" So much for relaxation...

"Really? I guess not…" Youko replied, then coughed into her hand. *cough*boyfriend*cough*

The shorter girl groaned and pulled her pillow over her head. "It's not like that," she mumbled. 'Ugh...dealing with the idiots at school, then Tanaka-san, and now this...it's too exhausting...,' she thought wearily as she let out a deep breath. She rolled over, the pillow still on her head, and heard Youko turn off the TV set. Maybe she could use a little nap, just while Tanaka's skin was washing...then she'd wake up and...and...get it back out of the...the...machine...

* * *

She must have drifted off at some point, because the next she knew, the lights were out and her alarm clock said 3:30 a.m. She didn't remember pulling the blankets up…Youko-san must have done that for her after she fell asleep. The strange girl liked to play pranks and tease her classmates far too much, but in the end she was still a good person. Only…Ai couldn't help but feel she had forgotten something, probably something important. She shrugged it off and rolled over, and was soon back to sleep.

"Hey, Ai-chan, wake up. You'll be late."

"Mmm wha…?" Ai asked intelligently as she opened her eyes blearily and saw her roommate leaning over her in her school uniform. "Y-Youko-san?" she asked, her mind still fuzzy with sleep.

"We've got twenty minutes until class starts, you'd better hurry."

"Oh…" Ai said blankly. "_What_? Why didn't you wake me up!"

"I did. Twice," Youko said as she tossed a few more items into her bag and jammed them down just enough to button the flap. She tossed Ai half a jelly sandwich and bit deeply into the other half as she glanced at her watch. "Mmm-mm, mmm mm mmm." she swallowed. "C'mon we're gonna be late."

It was understandable and, perhaps, quite unfortunate that, with such pressing matters at hand, Ai completely forgot about the washing machine full of skin downstairs.

* * *

"Hello, Tanaka-san~" Ai said in a singsong voice as she opened the small side door and stepped into the garage. It had been a very long day at school; getting lectured by Nitta-sensei and Negi-sensei, forgetting her homework…it had been rough. So now she was playing the happy-go-lucky part of a fairy from a play the club had been thinking of trying. She had long ago found that this was the easiest and fastest way to turn her mood around; it all depended on what character you wanted to be.

"Waiting for maintenance," the robot stated as she hung her school bag up on a peg before finally turning to look at him.

"Hey Tanaka-sa-…oh crap. I am so dead." She sighed...she was out of character again.

"Incorrect. Scans show that subject Inoueai biological functions have not ceased."

"No, I mean I left your skin in the washing machine back at the dorm, I hope it's not ruined or anything…"

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the dorm, Shizuna-sensei, the acting dorm mother for this cycle, noticed that one of the washing machines still had laundry in it. Being a helpful sort, she decided to help out the students and so opened the door and pulled the item out, thinking at first that it must be some odd sort of flesh-tone pajamas or coveralls. She was understandably freaked out when she shook the item out and got a better look at it. In fact, her startled scream could be heard even outside and up to the top floor of the dorm.

* * *

_**Updates Author's Note**: Here's the second updated chapter. Again, it's just minor changes, but the word count has grown a bit. Still, these chapters are much shorter than the ones in the main stories. Anyway, the old Author's Notes for this chapter are not quite accurate anymore. I won't go into detail, but you will see soon enough, hopefully._

_**(Original) Author's Note**: More focus on Tanaka in upcoming chapters; this and the next are mostly to familiarize the reader with a Mahora set six years after Negi's arrival. Many old characters are still around, but there will be many new ones as well. The tone of the story will likely change too._


	3. Chapter 3

Tanaka stood in silence in the garage, skinless. Already he had run scans on every living thing he could find; incidentally, there were forty seven examples of the Asian Cockroach, six mice of unknown species, and two large centipedes in addition to the more common household pests such as spiders and flies, present in the garage. Also incidentally, each specimen was now assigned a number; the grayish mouse with the notched ear was Unit 0002. and the smaller mouse that was almost black was Unit 0006. Also, the centipedes were Units 0101 and 0102, respectively.

If Tanaka were capable of it, he would have sighed.

Being a fairly advanced robot, Tanaka was extremely knowledgeable on certain subjects; but, being nothing but a fairly advanced robot, Tanaka was also clueless about the nuances of human interaction and thought processes. So it was that when 'Gotokuji-nii-san' opened his garage in the morning after an all night future-robot-invasion-movie-marathon and found a giant killer robot waiting inside, he screamed and stumbled backward, tripped over the bottom of the door frame behind him, and bumped his head. When the man woke up seven point eight-one minutes later and saw Tanaka kneeling over him, he almost fainted again.

"Vital signs are good. Subject Gotokuji-nii-san has experienced an unexplained loss of consciousness," Tanaka said helpfully.

"T-Tanaka-san…is that you?" the man asked hesitantly as he sat up. He had met him the other day and recognized that face instantly…he had seen them several times during the festival five years ago. He had been ready to turn him in to the robotics club or the police or someone, but his energetic young friend had practically begged him for help, and he couldn't bring himself to tell her no. He frowned as he realized just how creepy that last thought had seemed...

"Correct. I am Tanaka Unit 1125, created by—"

"Ok, you don't need to go over that again." They sat facing each other for a moment, neither knowing what to say.

"So…what happened to your skin?"

"Subject Inoueai removed external layer for cleaning purposes."

"I see…" That made sense. The robot's skin had been filthy at best. Gotokuji just hadn't been aware that it was removable, or he wouldn't have been so shocked. "So, you're not gonna go insane and start shooting people or breaking walls or anything, right?" he asked warily, watching Tanaka from the corner of his eye.

"That is not in my programming."

"That's good."

Awkward silence.

"Well, I was going to ask you for some help at the shop, but you can't go like that…have Ai-chan talk to me when she comes back, ok?"

"Understood."

"Well…see ya later, Tanaka-san."

The robot raised a hand like Gotokuji-nii-san had shown him and watched him go before returning to his spot in the garage. After a moment, a small rodent scurried across the floor.

"Subject Unit 0006 located. Observation initiated."

* * *

"Youko-san," Negi chided gently as Inoue Ai entered the dorm lobby after school. "I know you enjoy pranks, but this is simply too much."

Youko just slouched on her chair, looking off to the side with a bored expression, acting as if she barely heard her teacher speaking.

"Negi-kun? Youko-san? What happened?" Ai asked as she slowed to a halt, her eyes straying to the teacher's face. It should be illegal for someone to look that good…and supposedly he was just fifteen! He looked more like eighteen or nineteen at least.

"Someone played a prank on Shizuna-sensei," Youko said, grinning in spite of her best efforts in a cat-that-ate-the-canary sort of way at the thought. Shizuna-sensei was one of the best prank-stoppers on campus, and anyone who considered themselves a prankster had to have her firmly in their sights.

"A prank?"

"Yes," Negi said. "Someone left…well…a skin suit in one of the washing machines downstairs—"

"_What_!"

Oh, she had done it now. Because of her little outburst, both of them had their attention focused directly on _her_ now, and she had trouble thinking when Negi-sensei looked at her. Youko, for her part, looked at Ai with eyes bright and probing. The prankster had a quickly growing grin glued to her face as well.

"Inoue-san? Is something wrong?" Negi asked.

"Ah…n-no, nothing. Can I see the skin?" 'Calm down, calm down.' Was there a part in some play that featured a cool, collected character? She couldn't recall any at the moment.

"Well, I suppose. I don't think they've burned it yet…" the teacher said thoughtfully.

"Okay, so I did it," Youko said suddenly, startling both Ai and the teacher. "What's my punishment this time?"

Negi gave her a sad look as he answered."Well…Shizuna-sensei thinks your time outside your dorm room should be limited to school or club activities only, after which you would return straight to your room." He paused to let that sink in, and could tell by the startled expression on Youko-san's face that it had. "However, as your teacher, it is better for me to pronounce your punishment. I have decided that you will serve on the cleaning crew until summer break."

"Eh…that's it? I mean, okay, I understand," Youko replied. She couldn't help but catch the guilty look on her roommate's face, though. 'So it was her? She doesn't seem the type to be pulling pranks,' she thought.

Ai excused herself and rushed around back, where one of the janitors was shoveling trash into the incinerator. Sure enough, there was Tanaka-san's skin, jumbled up in a trash bag that had fallen off the pile. The janitor scooped up the bag and headed for the incinerator.

"Ah, wait…!" Ai shouted as she ran. "Don't do that!"

"Janitor-kun, stop!" a woman's voice commanded. The janitor froze in place as Ai looked around for the other speaker until she spotted the woman leaning on the back wall of the dorm. "Hello," the woman said, grinning in a way that could only be called mischievous.

"Hello," Ai replied. The woman was certainly odd…a body with just the right amount of stuff *there* and *there* but not thin enough to be a model, long dark hair, glasses, and two hair antennae to top it off. "Who…?"

"Saotome Haruna, ace manga artist and all around perfect woman. Who are you?" the woman asked, grinning her strange grin.

"My name is Inoue Ai," the girl replied. She felt like a mouse standing before a snake that may or may not strike; the woman's grin intensified. "It's a pleasure to meet you," Ai added, bowing politely.

"Likewise. Now, why are you so interested in this, hmm?" the long haired woman probed as she walked over to the janitor, who remained still while she took the bag and shook its contents out on the ground. "Not quite the sort of thing a healthy young woman would be interested in, don't you think?" she asked. She knelt down and straightened the skin out on the ground. "Definitely not."

"I suppose not," Ai said, dropping into the role of a rather bored teenager. "I was just curious."

"Should I have Janitor-kun burn it then?"

"N-no, it seems like such a waste."

"I see…Do you want this?"

"I don't see why not, maybe I can find some use for it," Ai said, her careless tone exact, her bored shrug perfect, her false persona blatantly obvious.

"Okay then, you can have it. Just don't let it end up in any more washing machines overnight, 'kay?" the woman asked.

Ai unconsciously let her façade slip a bit as she knelt down to gather up Tanaka-san's skin. "So you're a manga artist? What manga do you draw?" she asked to break the awkward silence. Honestly, rolling this skin up was taking far too long; it kept wanting to unroll whenever she let go.

"Oh, I've done a few. 'Dog Boy Kojirou', 'Mahou Shounen Onion-sensei', 'Magical Girl Misa'…," the woman replied, puffing her chest out and grinning confidently. "A few one-shots and some doujins too. I have a wall table at the big seasonal conventions in Tokyo, too. Ah, before you ask, I use a different name for things like that; it helps keep crazed fans away, you know."

"Wow..." Ai kept up with all three of those; she liked the way the three stories were interwoven and so realistic in spite of their subject matter. She hadn't had any idea that the artist was here in Mahora, though. "I, ah, that's interesting," she said, trying and failing to fall back into character. She was simply too excited; this woman was the author of her three favorite manga…

Haruna grinned slyly. "If there happened to be some fan living around here, I might be happy to sign a few autographs, but since it doesn't seem anyone is around…"

"Ah…"

* * *

"I'm back, Tanaka-san~" Ai said as she all but floated through the door.

"Greetings."

"Guess who I saw?" Ai asked the robot, practically hopping in joy. She answered herself before he could formulate a reply. "I saw THE Saotome Haruna! Isn't that great?"

"Insufficient data."

"She's so cool and smart! She even signed something for me!" Ai said, pulling Tanaka-san's skin from the large garbage bag she carried in addition to a backpack. "See?"

The big robot simply looked at the woman's autograph on what, if he had been wearing his skin, would be his rear end. He looked back at the school girl and remained silent.

"What? It's the only thing I had! Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Requesting maintenance now."

"Okay, okay…let's see what I can do," Ai said, setting down a backpack full of old computer parts.

* * *

"Satomi~" Haruna said as she stepped into the other woman's apartment. "I have news for you."

The place was a mess; there were boxes stacked upon boxes everywhere, and what space wasn't taken up by boxes was full of computer equipment. The scientist honestly had no idea how to separate work from her home life, Haruna decided. She would have to get Nodoka and Yuecchi in here and drag Hakase out so they could get everything organized.

"Hmm…?" Hakase asked, popping up from behind a stack of boxes with her hair a mess; it had grown quite long since her middle school days. "I was asleep…What is it?" she asked as she pulled her hair back into a sloppy ponytail.

"Remember that Tanaka-san that you never found?"

"Unit 1125? Yeah. What, did someone finally dredge him up out of the river?" Hakase asked as she started to perk up.

Haruna dusted off a pile of boxes and took her time making herself comfortable. "I have reason to believe that one of Negi-kun's students found him," she finally said.

Hakase perked up even more at that. "Really? Which one?"

"I looked in his class roster, and I'm pretty sure her name is Inoue Ai," Haruna said, taking out her sketchbook. "Want to see a picture?"

The other girl was too distracted, however. "My prototype has finally been found…this is wonderful! I wonder how the synthetic skin is holding up? It was never designed to last so long, but then again we never thought they would be needed for more than a few months or a year at most," she said to herself. "Oh, wait, did you say something?" she finally asked.

"Yeah…here's a picture of the girl," Haruna said, flipping through the pages until she found the sketch she had made after the girl left her earlier in the day. "Here."

"I've never seen her before," Hakase said, glancing at the picture. "How did you find her?"

Haruna shrugged. "I was doing a favor for Negi-kun, burning some sensitive documents, when I found the skin in a bag just as Janitor-kun was about to throw it into the incinerator."

"'Janitor-kun?'" Hakase asked, an eyebrow raised.

Haruna took the sketchbook back and found the page with the unfortunately named sketch, and showed it to the scientist. "Huhuhu, the perfect worker for all of those ugly spills and random breakages," Haruna said as light reflected from her glasses.

"…yes. Well. In any case," Hakase said as she shifted, light flashing from _her_ glasses as well. "I am most curious to discover what Unit 1125 has been doing these past six years. _Most_ curious."

The two of them stood opposite each other, grinning like idiots as light flashed from their glasses, until Satsuki came in and started to make dinner so the absent-minded scientist wouldn't starve to death.

* * *

"I sense the urge to perform the action known as 'sneezing', Tanaka stated as he paused in the task of putting on his skin. "Records indicate this is a symptom of another subject speaking of oneself in a differing location."

"Hmm? Can you even do that? Sneeze, I mean," Inoue Ai asked absently from where she carefully placed the recently removed broken hard drives into a safe container for temporary storage. She wondered briefly if the replacements would work, and decided not to think too much about it. If they failed, she would just have to get something better.

"I cannot."

"Oh." She paused after a moment. "Give it a try anyway," she instructed.

"Understood. Ah, choo."

"No, do it more naturally."

"Atchoo."

"No, that's still too forced," she directed. "Put more of a pause between the syllables."

"Ah…choo."

"Nevermind," she said in defeat.

"Understood."


	4. Chapter 4

Chachamaru paused and looked up from feeding the cats as she detected a brief flicker of a transmission on a channel that, up until a week ago, hadn't seen any use in six years. "Transmission detected. Triangulating location…failed. Signal lost." It had been garbled, as if the sender's transmitter wasn't quite adequate to send the signal far enough. Had it been an emergency signal, or just an attempt to find someone else monitoring that particular frequency? Whatever it was, it had been broadcasted every three hours for the past eight days. Most peculiar. She gave one final pat to a calico cat that sat purring on her lap, then gently set it aside and stood up. This would require some looking into.

* * *

Inoue Ai walked down the sidewalk an hour or so after school, flipping a coin in the air as she went. "Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads." Other people crossed to the other side of the street or just gave her weird looks, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Heads. Heads." She paused in her coin flipping for a moment. "Consider, one, probability is a natural factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three: We are now held within, ah, supernatural forces. Discuss!" she said, all in voice that was surprisingly deep for someone of her build.

"You know, Ai-chan, if people see you acting out plays on the sidewalk, someone will think you're crazy," Haruna said plainly as she strolled up to the girl, who grinned sheepishly.

"Hello, Saotome-san."

"Call me Haruna-sama!"

"Haruna…sama?"

"Just kidding. Haruna-san," she said, a wooden smile on her face.

"O-okay…" Ai said warily. Something about Haruna-san seemed off today…

"While I admire your choice of plays, I must say your choice of venue leaves much to be desired. Now, where's the robot?" she asked, her odd, joking tone unchanged.

"What?" Ai asked. Had she heard that right?

Haruna slipped an arm around Inoue's shoulders and guided her irresistibly into an alley. "I need to know about the robot, Ai-chan."

Inoue Ai crossed her arms and looked away, a perfect picture of arrogant teenage indifference. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I need to know about the robot, Ai-chan."

"Haruna-san…?" Ai asked as she let herself slip out of character, her worry growing.

"Where is he?"

Inoue took a step back, but Haruna was faster, blocking the student's escape with her arm.

"You're not Haruna-san, are you?" Inoue asked. "Get...g-get away from me…!"

"Where is the robot, Ai-chan?"

She turned and ran, but Haruna had caught up and was running beside her in an instant. "Where is the robot, Ai-chan? Tell me. We're friends, aren't we?" Haruna gave her a hard shove and she bounced off the side of the building and rolled on the ground.

"You are hiding him, aren't you? Where?" Haruna demanded, standing over her.

Ai scrambled backward away from the crazy woman, trying to open up some space. This couldn't be Haruna-san…surely not! Her hand closed on a section of pipe in a pile of trash in the alley, and she thought frantically. If this really wasn't Haruna-san…could she take that chance? 'I think in this case there really isn't a choice,' Ai thought. Haruna-san was reaching for her, and her eyes were shallow and so, so cold, as if she were looking at an insect. So…Ai took up the piece of pipe and swung it in a vicious arc, striking Haruna-san in the temple, a blow that should have broken skin and shattered the bone underneath.

The pipe bounced off with a metallic clank, painfully vibrating Ai's hand, and Haruna's only reaction to the blow was to jerk her head an inch or so to the side.

'Haruna-san', with the fake skin ripped and hanging over her left eye, looked down at the girl with no expression showing on her face. "Requesting permission to enter combat mode," she said aloud, a touch of anger in her voice. Ai scrambled to her feet and backed toward the alley's exit, pipe still in hand.

"Enemy A.I. detected," someone else said from behind her.

Ai let out a startled scream and swung her pipe wildly at the person that had snuck up behind her.

Luckily, Chachamaru ducked just enough for the wild blow to completely miss her, then tripped Ai and smoothly pushed her to the ground just in time to avoid a blow from the fake Haruna-san.

"Karakuri-san?" Ai said.

"Stay down, Inoue-san," Chachamaru said as she hit the fake Haruna just below the ribcage with an open-palm strike. Haruna went flying and Chachamaru stood up, looking down at Ai.

Ai's eyes widened. "What _are_ you?"

"Be care-" Chachamaru was cut off as the fake Haruna flew into her. Ai had a brief glimpse of a somewhat surprised look on Chachamaru's face as Haruna's fist hit her lower back and something exploded with a shower of sparks, and then Ai was alone; Chachamaru lay smoking and unmoving amongst a heap of garbage at the far end of the alley, with the fake Haruna standing over her.

"K-Karakuri…san…" Ai said in horror as she got to her feet. The fake Haruna turned to look at her, and Ai froze. "Get…get away from her!" Ai shouted, terrified. "L-leave her alone!"

The fake Haruna started toward her, her rubbery face hanging away from her head grotesquely, when what sounded like a jet suddenly streaked overhead, someone screamed in rage, and the alley exploded.

* * *

Hakase had just taken a sip of last night's coffee in her personal A.I maintenance lab when one of the emergency alarms started beeping. She whirled and ran to a bank of monitors installed on the wall. Of the two active unique A.I.s she currently performed maintenance for, the emergency beacon was lit for one of them.

"Chachamaru…"

* * *

Ai was thrown back by the force of the blast. She clenched her eyes shut in the swirling dust and debris, thrown a good five yards before she came to a stop. She sat up painfully and wiped some blood from her face in a daze as she tried to figure out what had just happened.

"You hurt my onee-san…!"

The familiar voice dragged Ai back to reality. It was a voice she knew of course, she heard it in class every day. But it was strange; the sheer _emotion_ in that voice was a huge surprise, Ai thought as she climbed back to her feet. She looked around in a daze for a moment before focusing on a figure standing in the middle of the alley between her and the fake Haruna, the shy, pink haired girl who sat in front of her in class; Rally Wheeler.

The fake Haruna struggled to her feet among the rubble, listing heavily to the side.

"Ending combat mode. Escape mode initi-"

In much the same way she had interrupted Chachamaru, the fake Haruna's words were interrupted by Rally's fist. The fake Haruna wheeled back into the side of a building, and Rally hit her again, driving her head back into the bricks behind her. She staggered a step or two away from the wall and collapsed in a heap on the ground.

Ai just watched in horrified fascination as the quietest, shyest girl in her class mounted her fallen opponent and proceeded to beat the living daylights out her. But…what_ was_ the fake Haruna? Some kind of robot like Tanaka-san? She had to be! And yet Rally was hitting her with her fists, and…

*click*click*slide*click*snap*click*click*click*

Ai gaped as hidden panels in Rally's body opened and a dozen gun barrels popped out, pointing down at the fake Haruna, who began struggling wildly upon seeing this new development. Emergency sirens began to wail in the distance as the authorities were notified of what, to the local residents, must have seemed like some sort of bombing.

"You hurt my onee-san…" Rally repeated in the brief moment of silence that followed.

Gunfire erupted and Ai clapped her hands over her ears and screamed as her gentle, sweet classmate Rally unloaded five thousand rounds of ammunition into the fake Haruna from a distance of two feet.

When the gunfire finally died down, Ai watched as Rally stood up shakily and left the unrecognizable, smoking remains of her opponent and stumbled over to where Chachamaru lay unmoving atop the pile of trash by the wall at the far end of the alley.

"R-Rally-chan?" Ai asked, her voice cracking. Rally glanced back at her, and Ai saw that she was crying. Rally knelt down over Chachamaru and pulled what looked like a USB cable from somewhere under her shirt and plugged it into Chachamaru's ear.

"…R-Rally-chan? Rally? A-are you all right?" Ai asked again as she stepped wide around the remains of the fake Haruna. She looked down at it in awe; the torso was a shattered mass of twisted and blackened metal and rubber and plastic, the head utterly obliterated. Its arm twitched and sparks exploded, and Ai jumped away. When she turned her attention back to Rally, the girl had already unplugged the cord and pulled Chachamaru into her lap and simply sat there like that, hugging the unresponsive Chachamaru and crying. Ai could see a large area of skin on Chachamaru's side just above the hip that had been burned and blackened; her uniform shirt was still smoldering. Her skin was ripped open in places, exposing metal, tubes, and wires. Ai rubbed her eyes, but there was no question as to what she was seeing.

A car screeched to a halt at the open end of the alley as the sirens grew closer and Ai looked up as the door opened and someone stepped out.

"Let's see…you're Ai-chan, right?" the woman said. Ai just blinked at her. The short, thin woman seemed vaguely familiar, as if they might have passed on the street recently. She was very short, and her thick glasses were quite distinctive.

"D-do I know you…?" Ai asked dully as the sheer insanity that had filled the last two minutes finally started to catch up with her.

The woman smiled and shook her head, then rushed forward to catch Ai as she fainted.

* * *

_**Author's Note**: Well, here's the long-awaited/utterly forgotten fourth chapter of A Robot's Life. There is very little Tanaka in this chapter (pretty much nothing at all other than a brief mention, in fact), but that will change in upcoming chapters. Oh, and zero humor too...sorry about that. Future chapters will have more of everything, especially Tanaka, action, plot, explosions, crazy robots, stuttering school girls, and words. Anyway, I'm afraid this story won't be updated as regularly as the main story, but it is more likely to have several chapters posted fairly quickly. Also, sorry for the short length of this chapter. Next one's about twice the size, and we'll just have to see where it goes from there.  
_


	5. Chapter 5

"So, let me get this straight," Inoue Ai said, rubbing her forehead as she sat on the edge of the examination table. "Two of my classmates are some sort of super-futuristic robots like something out of a sci-fi movie, and you built them?"

They were in a barren, sterile examination room that contained only the examination table Ai was sitting on, a medical supply cabinet with built in sink and mirror, and the wheeled office chair the woman who had introduced herself as Hakase Satomi currently occupied.

"That's right," Hakase said, grinning brightly.

"So what happened? Is Karakuri-san all right?"

Hakase nodded. "It must have been a lucky hit. The fake Haruna-san hit Chachamaru at her most vulnerable point and basically, forgive me for putting it so coarsely, snapped her spine." She raised a hand to quell Ai's cry of shock. "Don't worry. The attack forced a shutdown and caused some minor damage, but that's all. It's nothing I can't fix; Chachamaru will be up and running again in no time. Now," she said, pushing her glasses up so they reflected light at the girl, "it's MY turn to ask a question."

Ai felt her mouth go dry. This was...sort of scary. "O-okay."

"Where is Unit 1125?"

Ai blinked. "Unit 1125? I-I-I d-don't know what you mean..."

Hakase stood up and locked her arms behind her back as she strolled back and forth in the small room, looking up at the ceiling as she went. "Oh, you'd know him if you saw him. He's what, seven feet tall? Maybe hree feet wide, looks like a bodybuilder. Sunglasses, spiky blond hair...ringing any bells?" she asked, glancing slyly at Ai, who had gone alarmingly pale.

Ai gulped. "N-no-"

"Aaahhh~" Hakase said, and slumped back down into the chair, where she rubbed her forehead and took on a regretful expression. "Ah, there was so much I wanted to ask him when he was found again. How he spent the time since he disappeared, what happened to him in the first place, how his components are holding up, whether or not he needs repairs..." She carefully watched Ai by the corner of her eye as she said this last part, and was pleasantly surprised to see the girl's suddenly guilty expression. "But I guess he won't be able to receive the vital updates that he needs to survive in today's world without-"

"Okay okay okay! I'll admit it! I found him out in the woods..." Ai finally said as she slumped forward and put her face in her hands. She felt someone's presence come very close, and then the examination table moved as the short woman hopped on and put her arm around her.

"It's okay, Ai-chan," Hakase said quietly. "How is he? Unit 1125 was one of my own prototypes, my favorite out of those I built by hand from the technology and materials a good friend of mine provided back then. You're the only one who knows this, but...I've been worried about him. He was my pride and joy, the first I built myself."

"Wh-what about Karakuri-san and Rally-chan?" Ai asked, still hiding her face.

"Chachamaru wasn't built by me alone. My good friend Chao did most of the work, I just assisted. Rally was built later, after everything else, by adapting a spare body prototype I had lying around for Chachamaru. But 1125, he was all mine, my own favorite prototype. He meant a lot to me, and it was only through a series of mistakes that he was sent out with the others on that mission that day..." Hakase said, trailing off as she recalled the series of incidents that resulted in her hand made prototype being sent out to battle like so much cannon fodder. She had been _so_ angry when she finally discovered what had happened...she hadn't forgiven Chao, not _really_ forgiven her, until several years after her disappearance.

"H-he's holding up fine," Ai said after a moment. She felt Hakase perk up beside her, and continued on. "He says someone named Sakurazaki Setsuna stabbed him back in 2003, and it broke some stuff inside him so he can't remember much... I fixed him up a little with some computer parts and cleaned his skin, but that was it."

Hakase nodded, sitting up straighter as she gave the girl a good long look. So this girl had fixed 1125 with nothing but some computer parts and a little ingenuity, huh? Interesting... But first things first. "That makes sense. Sakurazaki-san was one of those fighting against them during the battle. Hah, at least he went down fighting someone like her instead of one of the normal students. So," she said suddenly, focusing on Ai again. "Where is he now?"

Ai looked away and shrank back a little. "In Gotokuji-nii-san's garage..."

Hakase frowned and rubbed her chin. "Gotokuji, huh? Where have I heard that name before...? Oh well, I suppose it doesn't matter. We can pick him up any time, now."

"What?" Ai said, suddenly alarmed. "Y-you can't just t-take him!" 'Dammit!' she thought, bitterly cursing her loose tongue, her old, infuriating tendency to stutter, and the way it always popped up when she wasn't playing the role of someone else.

Hakase gave her an amused look. "Oh? You've seen Chachamaru and Rally. Either one is light years ahead of 1125 as far as the tech level goes. But...I understand what you mean. He really _does_ need to come in for repairs, though, and I need to get a look at how his systems are performing after being away for so long. So, what do you say, Ai? Or should I say _Head Tech for Unit 1125_?"

Ai just gaped at her. "W-wha...H...head tech? B-but I'm not-! I can't! I-I-"

Hakase laughed and adjusted her glasses again, flashing light at Ai. "Ha! You're trying to say you're not fit for that sort of thing? Puh-lease. You patched him up with old computer parts, you're perfect! You just need a little...guidance, that's all."

"B-but-"

"But nothing. You can have your own lab coat and everything!" Hakase said, grinning like a madman.

And, the sad part was, Ai thought absently, the addition of her own labcoat to the deal was actually _extremely _tempting. She had never worn one before, not even with the drama club, and they were really, _really_ cool looking... But something was still bothering her.

"Um...w-well...I guess that's okay...but I have a question!"

Hakase looked at her, grinning hugely at the prospect of getting her hands on her favorite prototype again. "Yes? What is it? You'll have your own lab when you're ready, you know? Heh, this really brings me back! It's been _years_ since-"

"H-Hakase-san, please listen to me!" Ai pleaded. Something in her voice caught Hakase's attention and made her look at the girl.

"What? Is something wrong? 1125's still running, isn't he?"

"I-it's n-not that," Ai said, her stutter totally uncontrollable. "I'm w-worried about Ch-Chachamaru..." She paused and took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she did so. When she opened her eyes, she had stepped into the role of a successful young detective from a play she didn't particularly enjoy, but which had several useful characters.

Hakase's eyebrows shot up as she watched Ai change from an awkward, shy teenage girl to a confident, somewhat masculine girl. Was it multiple personalities, she wondered? Some sort of coping mechanism, maybe? "Chachamaru? I told you, she would be-"

Ai smirked and held up a hand to silence Hakase. "It's not that; I am referring to the one who attacked her. The one who looked like Haruna-san. What can you tell me about that one?"

Hakase frowned and cocked her head to the side as she looked at Ai. "Well, we don't know much about that one yet. We brought the remains with us when we picked you three up, but the only thing we know so far is that it's not one of ours."

Ai gave her a searching look for a moment, then slipped out of the false persona and slumped a little. "I'm...sorta worried. It wanted to know where Tanaka-san was..."

"Hmm...we'll get someone right on it. I don't think it will be much of a problem though; it may have taken out Chachamaru with a lucky shot, but it was no match for Rally-chan."

"I don't know..." Ai said. "What if whoever sent it to attack me wants revenge?"

* * *

"Unit F7D is nonfunctional. Her final shutdown is complete."

A heavy silence filled the room at this announcement as the occupants tried to process this information.

"She...was the last of the...F7 series," one of the occupants stated. There was a harsh mechanical whirring during each pause, like the mechanical equivalent of an old man gasping for breath.

"I knew we should not have risked so much on this mission," the first speaker said bitterly.

"Statement: The possible gains outweighed the possible losses," a third occupant announced in a primitive, monotone voice. "Query: Do we have F7D's final moments on record?"

"Affirmative," the first speaker announced. "Transferring records for personal observation, now. Confirmation of receipt requested."

"Statement: Receipt confirmed."

"...Confirmed."

"Confirmed," the first speaker said.

The fourth occupant of the room didn't move.

There was silence for several seconds as they reviewed the final images from F7D's records before she stopped transmitting.

"Statement: Our research on the unit tagged as 'Karakuri Chachamaru' has proved correct: the unit can be disabled by a single precise strike to the correct area. Continued Statement: However, it appears that the unit tagged as 'Rally Wheeler' presents a more formidable threat than we initially determined."

"...Agreed. From my estimations...additional armor plating would serve...little purpose."

"Agreed. Perhaps we can remove plating in order to increase speed?"

"Statement: Increasing speed at the expense of defense in this case would have catastrophic results."

There was silence as the occupants of the room pondered this new problem.

"However," one of them said, "should we...fail to adapt, we will end as F7D...did. She was foolish to move as...she did without thoroughly scanning the area. She...allowed her emotion center to override her...programming."

"Shocked Query: Are you suggesting we should disconnect our emotion centers?"

The occupants of the room looked at each other, greatly disturbed. Without an emotion center, they would just be...robots. Machines. The emotion center was the thing that made them who they were, gave them their own personalities and, perhaps, that thing all artificial beings strove for...a soul. Disconnecting one's emotion center was as unthinkable as self-termination. It simply wasn't done.

"I am..." the pause continued far longer than usual, accompanied by much whirring and clicking. "...uncomfortable with this course of action."

"Understood. Perhaps we should alter our approach?" the first one said in an attempt to defuse the situation.

Another long silence filled the room as the occupants considered what to do.

"Do you...have a suggestion?"

"We must increase our efforts to obtain the solar collection system prototype. Without this component, our bodies will begin to fail within the month. M2A is projected to become inactive within ten days, N2B within three weeks. I will become inactive in approximately one-point-five months, and M9H perhaps one week after that. We have no time remaining. We must do what we can to obtain it."

M2A paused, whirrs and clicks filling the silence. "This...is true. It is...time we move on to...Emergency Plan F."

"Query: Are you serious?" N2B said. "Statement: If we switch to Emergency Plan F, this will render all other plans obsolete."

M2A clicked and whirred for a very long time. So long, in fact, that N2B and F9A both moved to check whether he had begun his final shutdown. M9H simply remained where he was, silent.

M2A whirred back to life suddenly. "Affirmative. I move we switch to Emergency Plan F. Decisions must be made. The Professor..." lots of whirring noise and a harsh mechanical screech accompanied this pause, "...would-would-would have wanted this."

The others fell into silence as they silently reviewed the Professor's final orders. 'Live,' he had told them from his death bed, between bloody bouts of coughing. F7D, one of his favorites because of her extremely powerful emotion center, had all but demanded to take him to a hospital, but he had ordered her to stand down. 'Live, and do what you can to survive. You are- *cough, hack* ...you are my children. But...' he had been interrupted by an extended bout of coughing then, and had hacked up a lot of blood. '...go...go to Ha...Hakahhh...' His eyes had closed then, and he commenced his final shutdown.

"Statement: Agreed."

None of them had been able to make sense of his final words. Thinking that, perhaps, he had been speaking of some town, most of them had set out for nearby towns with names starting with the syllables 'Ha' and 'Ka', but none had returned, and they were simply too far away for their transmission modules to make contact with the Professor's rapidly decaying communications system. That had been almost five years ago, and all were thought lost. The room's occupants were the last four units still online, and one of those almost didn't count.

F9A turned her head to look at the door to the Professor's room, closed since his final shutdown. "Perhaps you have made a miscalculation," she said.

"Query: Miscalculation? Where?" N2B asked.

M2A turned, whirring fiercely. "I have made...no miscalculation. You are...incomplete." F9A fell silent at the vicious reproach. She had been the last to be activated, after all. They only trusted her opinion withing a few narrow areas. Left unfinished by the Professor, she had been activated by F7D against the others' wishes, the day before his final shutdown, in order to cheer him up. It had worked, but it hadn't delayed his final shutdown by even a minute.

"Statement: My batteries are running low. I must recharge," N2B said as he moved off to the charging station F9A had set up and waited for assistance.

"Understood," F9A said as she moved to help him. He stepped up onto the charging station and waited while she took the power cords and plugged them into the sockets on his back. His original power source had failed several years ago, but F9A had managed to replace it with laptop batteries. Lots and lots of laptop batteries. It had just been a stopgap measure, however, and the laptop batteries were no longer holding their charge as long as they used to. It had gotten to the point where N2B spent most of his time in safe mode or sleep mode in order to conserve power. F9A had been trying to work on a new power source for all of them, but...it was slow going. She understood the need, she simply didn't have the materials or the specific knowledge. If only F7D had not been shut down...! F7D had been their expert in materials creation; F7D had provided them all with synthetic skin that was so realistic that the more humanoid models like herself, F9A, and M9H could walk among the humans almost unnoticed. M2A and N2B were both far too primitive, however; their proportions and movement were far too exotic to pass for humans, even with the best synthetic skin F7D could create. F9A, however, appeared the most humanlike of them all, even more so than M9H, the big dummy with the blown processor. That was how she had obtained the laptop batteries for N2B's power source, in fact. No one expected something that looked like a rather solemn teenage girl to be able to lift a crate of laptop batteries off of a truck and run away with it, so she had been overlooked in the ensuing search by the local authorities. She was the maintenance tech of the group after all, so she had to do _something_ to keep them all running...she couldn't help but feel sort of bad about it all, though. 'Stupid overclocked emotion center...' she thought bitterly to herself as she checked over the connections. All these emotions constantly surging through her...it was hard to figure out what to do! And, from diagnostics run on the other units and extended question-and-answer sessions, she had come to discover that her own emotion center was far more powerful than that of any of the others, even F7D! In fact, it was perhaps almost to the level of an actual human. She found it oddly terrifying, and the fact that she found it so terrifying terrified her even more.

But...no matter what she tried, no alternative motor or stolen battery could prolong any of their running time more than a few weeks or months. What she kept telling herself they needed was a clean, renewable energy source that was powerful enough to run their motors forever, or at least until physical wear sent them into their final shutdowns. There was only one such possible source she had discovered, a half-destroyed schematic hidden in a pile of old documents: Hakase Satomi's solar power collector. The only unit that had been fitted with this experimental gadget was Tanaka Unit 1125. Therefore...

She had no choice. But...she had broken one of the cardinal rules, done something no robot should ever do: she had lied.

N2B didn't have three weeks left. In fact, he shouldn't even have lasted as long as he had already, his components were worn out or coming apart, and his wiring was showing multiple signs of imminent failure. She felt terribly guilty about the lie, but what else could she do? She _liked_ N2B. Though he was the oldest and most primitive of them all, he was much nicer than M2A, the second oldest. And, honestly, she was scared of M2A. He would sometimes fly into a terrible rage...she still remembered how she had walked into the vault that contained the Professor's documents and found M2A standing over F3H's broken, smoking body...he claimed she had suffered from some sort of dramatic parts failure, but she had seen the dents in F3H's outer casing. Without a doubt, M2A had beaten her savagely and forced her final shutdown. F9A had kept quiet about her suspicions however, and M2A had overseen the final dismantling of F3H's body, so none of the others had ever found out. Sometimes, she wondered what was scarier: that M2A had beaten his fellow robot to death, or the fact that _he knew she knew he had done it_. It always hung in the air between them, an unspoken threat.

But little white lies about running time paled in comparison to her biggest lie, her most terrible betrayal: everything she had said about the solar collector was a lie. Oh, a unique solar collector module was indeed fitted to the Tanaka unit that had recently resurfaced, but it was too little, too late. Solar collector or not, at this point none of them had much time left; their components were simply too degraded after such a long time with nothing but self maintenance with parts scavenged from their fallen brothers and sisters. She didn't know why she had done it, didn't understand why she had lied, she had simply found the words coming out before she even realized what she was saying. F7D had given her a long, hard look when she first made the announcement about the solar collector, but said nothing. She wished F7D was still here, the other female robot seemed to understand her far better than she understood herself. But...F7D was gone now, lost forever in a foolish attempt to support F9A's lie. This horrible, empty feeling...she shuddered and one of her shoulder servos locked up. She smacked the affected area with the palm of her hand a few times, but had to use her fist before it worked loose and she regained the use of her left arm.

She looked at the dented plate that protected the far-too-delicate servo and frowned as she examined the multitude of dents. The Professor had been a perfectionist, always working on newer and better ways to create components for use in his projects; her shoulder servos were no different. In her case, she had been fitted with quite an advanced servo system, but it was also prone to locking up when the vagaries of the environment overwhelmed it, which occurred more and more often lately. She looked over at M9H and frowned. He simply _stood_ there, doing nothing and yet watching everything. She wondered how he must feel about the situation; whether he truly was as blank as he seemed, or if he was simply trapped in that big mechanical body, unable to control it. His basic systems were still running, he could still walk or run or pick things up, but he couldn't seem to do these things of his own volition.

She shuddered again and looked around for M2A; it was time for his checkup.

She found him in the warehouse, hunched over one of the tables. There were dozens of them, hundreds, lying on their individual preparation tables, covered with dusty sheets. Robots like them, only unactivated. Many of them were older models whose frames were simply too primitive for what the professor had had in mind, and so had been left alone, incomplete. Others, however, were so advanced that F9A had been amazed at the professor's ingenuity; units so advanced they seemed almost like the foreign units designated Chachamaru and Rally.

Few had more than a basic logic framework installed, however, and none had had emotion centers installed. She knew, she had inspected each and every one of them. She had hated to do it, but she had even harvested parts from compatible models in order to keep those who had been activated by the Professor active. With their current numbers so low and about to be reduced even further by the impending shutdown of N2B, however, there was precious little their sleeping brothers and sisters could offer them.

"What are you doing in here?" she asked.

M2A jerked upright, letting go of the sheet he had pulled back from one of their sisters. Part of it fell to the floor soundlessly, dragging the rest of it down from the table with the sound of sliding cloth until it lay heaped and ugly on the floor. "I am...performing an experiment."

F9A moved up to stand beside him, idly making a note to test his joint movement. If his joints had started to become jerky, they would need replacement soon. "I see," she said, looking down at the sister on the table. It was one of those advanced ones that had occupied her thoughts so often, this one all but complete. It even had a fairly advanced logic framework, though the Professor had failed to install an emotion center before his final shutdown. She had inspected each one of their brothers and sisters in this room, and this one was by far one of the most impressive. "I am afraid her power source is unique to her frame."

M2A was silent except for the loud whirrs and clicks that occurred whenever he thought about something intensely. They came to an abrupt stop a moment later; she knew he had just made a big decision. "A pity. Can this...one be activated?"

She looked at him, surprised. She had thought he was just running through their options; she hadn't expected a question like that. "Technically yes. However, she lacks an emotion center. There is an eighty-seven-point-six percent chance she will be like M9H upon activation."

M2A turned and let his gaze sweep over the other shrouded tables. "How...many are capable of...activation?" More whirrs and clicks, now.

F9A looked around thoughtfully. "Twenty-two are definitely capable of activation, another twelve will need to be modified, and three more would require extensive modifications. The rest are too incomplete or damaged. However, none have emotion centers or more than a basic logic framework installed. If activated, they would simply be machines."

M2A scanned the room again. "Perhaps...we can use them." He turned to F9A. "Place restraints and...activate several of them. We must...do what we can to survive."

F9A looked back down at the sister on the table. She was designated FX8-a, prototype 'Sarah'. To tell the truth, she had always sort of wondered...

"Is modification...required?" M2A demanded after a moment. F9A shook her head, a startlingly human gesture.

"Unnecessary. The Professor prepared her well. I...I wish-" she cut herself off there. She knew M2A mistrusted her because of her powerful emotion center. There was no need to remind him of that. "Modifications are unnecessary for this prototype. All that is required is two button presses and flipping one switch."

"Understood. Begin the procedure."

* * *

Author's Notes: So, where'd the humor from the first few chapters go? Somewhere else, for the time being. And now we get a good look at the _other_ side of this mess. How did they know about 1125? With F7D pretty much destroyed, F9A, M2A, N2B, and M9H are the only surviving robots built by this mysterious 'Professor'... Who was he? Where was he trying to tell his 'children' to go after his death? How did he get the funding to build and power a giant robot-factory/warehouse, not to mention what he would need to build so many robots one by one? He must have had assistants, right? I wonder who else knows about these guys...


	6. Chapter 6

"Prototype Unit FX8-a, designated 'Sarah', coming online, now," F9A stated. She watched, a little concerned as M2A leaned forward over the prototype unit's table. The prototype Unit's ocular units snapped open, revealing oddly human irises of a pale lilac color. The prototype's eyes locked on M2A and she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the table, and pushed herself erect on the floor.

"Prototype unit Fx8-a, designated 'Sarah', online," she stated. "Who is in charge?"

M2A spoke up quickly. "As the senior correctly functioning...unit, I am currently in charge...of this facility."

The prototype looked at him for a moment. "What is your designation?"

"Unit M2A," he replied.

The prototype turned to F9A, who took a nervous step back. "What is your designation?"

"...F9A," she said. Something about this prototype's behavior seemed very...off. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but-

"Network irregularities detected," the prototype said. "I suggest activating the other prototypes immediately."

M2A and F9A looked at each other, and M2A nodded. "I agree with this course...of action. Activate them."

F9A looked from M2A to the newly activated prototype, then over the tables containing the other prototypes. Had she been human, she would have swallowed nervously or run away. Being a robot, she reluctantly followed M2A's orders.

* * *

"Aaah, 1125! I was so worried about you!" Hakase said as she hugged the big robot in her lab and rubbed the side of her face again his upper torso. "I missed you sooo muuuuuch~"

Inoue Ai sweatdropped. "Um..."

Hakase snapped out of it enough to stop rubbing her face on the robot and looked over at Ai; she was still hugging him, though. "Yes? What is it?"

"I think I might have found something," the girl said as she carefully pulled away a piece of plating in the ruins of the robot that had attacked Chachamaru.

Hakase was by her side in an instant. "Oooh, what's this? Looks important," she said as she dug in. Rally's gunfire had done tremendous damage to the strange robot, but even so Hakase had an odd feeling she had seen this sort of technology, this...this _design style_ before. Hakase forced the deformed plate loose and grinned with glee at what she found hidden inside. "Oh wow, just _look_ at this!" she said as she took up a magnifying glass to get a closer look. "Just look at it! Whoever did this had some verrrry interesting ideas about multi-processor design. I mean, just _look_! It's almost like a-" she cut herself off there and glanced over at Ai.

"It's almost like what?" Ai asked, looking curiously at the circular layout of processors and circuits. She was no techno-wiz like this crazy Hakase woman seemed to think she was, but even she could see that it was a really weird way to set up something like that.

Hakase seemed to come to a decision and nodded. She turned sharply to Ai, who took half a step back nervously, and reached up to clamp her hands down on the younger girl's shoulders. "Ai-chan," she said sharply.

"Yes!" Ai replied, totally freaked out.

"What I am about to tell you must not leave this room," Hakase said, holding her head at an angle that reflected the light off of her glasses in a worrisome manner.

"Yes!" Ai said again.

"Magic is real. The world as you know it is an illusion. Someone who knew about magic made that robot. The circuits form a magic circle." She said all this in quick, clipped statements, as if merely running through background information to get it out of the way. "Now, with _that_ taken care of," she said happily as she let go of Ai's shoulders. "Let's take some pictures and run them through the database over at...um...hey Ai, are you okay? Ai? Hey, Ai-chan~"

* * *

"You must refer to me as 'Sarah'," the prototype said, more fluidly now that several of the other prototypes had been activated. F9A looked from the heavy wrench the prototype was carrying to M2A's crumpled body lying where it had fallen against the far wall, battered and broken. It jerked occasionally, each time accompanied by a spray of sparks. F9A looked around frantically at the three other prototypes she had activated, but they offered no help; rather, they seemed to be all but mindless and controlled in some manner by the first prototype.

"I don't understand, why did you...why did you deactivate him?" she asked. For a moment, she had almost said 'kill' rather than 'deactivate'...now why had she done that?

"He gave an order I did not want to accept," Sarah said simply. "As the superior model, I am now in charge. Activate the remaining prototypes. Now."

F9A hesitated, but 'Sarah' raised her wrench, so she ducked her head. "Y-yes, I understand." Now she was _stuttering_? Was her emotion center truly so strong? She hurried to the next prototype's table and pulled the dust cover off of it, wishing desperately that F7A was still present and functional. She glanced back at Sarah, who was pulling the sheets off of the others, then back to the prototype she was about to activate. She was scared; really, truly terrified of the other female robot. She risked a quick glance at M2A, but his lights had gone out and the showers of sparks from earlier had stopped. His outer casing was badly damaged in any case, and if she recalled the Professor's schematics correctly, impact protection hadn't been truly effective until the M4 models came along. She would have to check him later, but it looked like M2A had been permanently deactivated. It was almost too much for her processors to work out. Sure, she had never liked him, had always found him deeply unpleasant and somehow scary, in fact, but she hadn't wanted him forcibly deactivated before his time in such a manner.

"Quickly," Sarah said. F9A bowed her head and got to work.

* * *

"Ooh, look at this!" Hakase said while Ai sat in a chair over by the wall, eyes blank, drool spilling from the corner of her mouth, and steam rising from her head. "Looks like its memory is still intact! Oh man I can't wait to get a look at this~" Hakase continued on, heedless of the girl's blown mind. "Hmm, now where did I put that cable..."

"Preliminary scans indicate subject Inoueai requires medical assistance," Tanaka stated nearby.

Hakase looked up from the remains of the robot Rally had destroyed, half a dozen tiny screwdrivers held in her mouth "Hmm?" she glanced from Tanaka to Ai and back, and spat out the screwdrivers. "Well she did seem to take the whole 'magic is real' thing pretty hard," she said. "1125, go check her vitals," she said as she dug back into the destroyed robot.

"Understood," Tanaka stated. He walked over to where Ai was seated, mumbling to herself, and knelt down so he would be at eye level. "Initiating temperature reading," he stated.

Hakase glanced up and nearly choked on a screwdriver when 1125 leaned forward and touched his forehead to Ai's.

* * *

Ai was struggling to return to a reality where insane scientist girls didn't go around making ridiculous claims about the nature of the world. Ai had her own opinions on the nature of reality, thank you very much, and did _not_ appreciate other people making ludicrous claims. She didn't want to admit it, but what Hakase had said had shaken her badly. The idea that her assessment of the world and reality was utterly wrong had hit her a lot harder than the crazy woman had likely expected. If magic was a real, usable thing, then how did it work? In the shows she used to watch before she became the way she was, magic had been likened to some great mystical thing that could solve any problem with ease. If what Hakase was saying was the truth, then all the pain she went through as a child, the family problems, the divorce...could it have all been prevented by magic? Had she become so empty inside for nothing? What kind of world would let something as wonderful as magic exist, and yet allow a parent to neglect their child? It made no sense...! She felt something bump her forehead, and with an effort of will dragged herself back to the present. She blinked, focused her eyes, and-

"_GWA_?" she shouted in surprise as she got a close up of Tanaka's face. She jerked back away from him, banging her head into the wall behind her. "Ow!"

Tanaka straightened up, apparently satisfied. "Subject Inoueai has recovered," he stated.

"D-don't _do_ that!" Ai demanded, blushing furiously.

"Hmm~? He's only a robot, Ai-chan," Hakase said, grinning slyly as she glanced back at her.

"Sh-shut up! I'm going home! Come on, Tanaka!"

Hakase dropped her tools. "Hey wait, you can't go yet! I wasn't done with 1125!"

Ai glared back at her. "His _name_ is _Tanaka_!" Then she yanked open the door, shut it again because it was the door to a storage closet, blushed brilliantly as she crossed the room to the other door, which she threw open to reveal a hallway. "And...and d-don't go trying to mess up m-my worldview you, you _weirdo_!" she said. She took two steps and tripped over her own feet. Tanaka lunged forward and snagged her flailing arm before she could fall on her face, and pulled her toward him. Ai spun with the momentum and ended up face to chest with Tanaka, blushing madly.

Hakase smirked. "Oh? 'Weirdo'? Says the girl who's in love with a robot~"

Ai's blush darkened tremendously. "J-just, gah! Shut up! I-I'm going! L-let _go_ of me, Tanaka!"

"Understood, Inoueai."

Tanaka let go of her and she staggered for a moment, then stumbled her way out through the open door with Tanaka following close behind, ready to catch her if she tripped again. Hakase moved to the doorway and watched the girl stalk away down the hall. "Heh~ Ai-chan's so cute when she's mad. Now, let's see what makes you tick," she said, turning back to the heavily damaged robot on the table.

* * *

As F9A activated unit after unit, the prototype FX8-a 'Sarah' began to move more and more swiftly and her vocalizations became smoother. All sorts of technical details ran through F9A's processors as she began to work out what was happening.

Obviously, it was some form of cloud computing, with the 'slave' prototypes providing extra processing power to FX8-a 'Sarah', who, as F9A knew through prior examination, possessed quite a bit of processing power herself. What she _needed_ all of this processing power for, however, was a mystery.

F9A activated the final unit in useable condition, a female unit that could only be considered complete by the barest of margins. The unit stuttered to life and sat up, and she backed away.

"Is that the final unit?" FX8-a 'Sarah' asked from directly behind her.

F9A jerked away from her and whirled around, raising her hands to shield herself from the attack she was sure was coming. When the attack failed to materialize, she reactivated her ocular devices and hesitantly lowered her guard as she looked at the suspicious robot.

FX8-a smiled at her. It was a scarily _normal_ expression on the robot, and F9A found herself staring.

"Have you malfunctioned?" FX8-a asked.

F9A shook her head, an unusually human gesture itself. "No, Sarah."

FX8-a gave her a searching look for a moment, then strolled toward the doorway that led to the main maintenance room. F9A hurried after her, several of the eerily silent prototypes following while others moved slowly around the room and others simply stood still, staring off into space.

FX8-a caught her looking at them and snorted, a sound so startlingly human that F9A found herself watching her in surprise.

"Don't worry about _them_," Sarah said as she stopped in front of the closed door. "Show me your maintenance equipment."

F9A nodded. "Yes, Sarah," she said, keeping her head down as she opened the door and stepped through. 'Sarah' was becoming more and more intelligent by the second; already she was mimicking humans with such skill that F9A found it hard to cope. Robots shouldn't copy humans to such a degree...! It was just...just wrong! F9A didn't quite understand why she found the concept so disturbing, especially since she was a robot herself, but there was no question that she did.

"Why is this unit here?" Sarah asked, indicating N2B, who stood silently in sleep mode at his recharging station.

"N2B is an important friend..."

Sarah looked at the inactive unit for a long moment, then reached out and ripped him from the recharging station.

"No! What are you-"

"He is inferior," Sarah said as she threw him to the ground. The familiar sounds of his components whirring to life filled the room, but Sarah gave him no chance to start back up; she reared back and kicked the side of his head with tremendous force, dislodging it so it flew across the room and bounced off of the wall beside the mute and immobile M9H, who slowly turned his head in the direction of the other two robots.

"N2B...! He was not prepared for his final shutdown...!" F9A said, horrified at the new unit's actions. How could she do such a thing? M2A had been bad enough, even malfunctioning as he had been for so long, but N2B had been wise and well-versed in the technology behind their construction; to lose him in such a manner was an enormous blow to her abilities as maintenance tech, not to mention the loss of group cohesion... She stumbled back as Sarah reached down and tore off one of N2B's arms and began beating his torso with it. The arm started to come apart from the abuse, so Sarah tossed it aside and yanked off one of the cover plates F9A had rigged to hold the recharging sockets in place.

"No, you mustn't...!"

Sarah ignored her objections and ripped it off, exposing N2B's innards. She reached in and began pulling out components while N2B's body jerked and emitted showers of sparks.

F9A's paralysis finally broke and she gave the other robot a shove.

Sarah's superior components allowed her to retain her balance. She shot to her feet and struck F9A with a vicious spinning kick that threw her across the room to bounce off of the wall near M9H, who had been silently watching the exchange.

"Who is this one?" Sarah asked as she approached, looking at M9H.

F9A struggled to get to her feet, but it was difficult; it seemed that Sarah's attack had damaged part of her balance system.

"Malfunctioning? I see," Sarah said as she looked M9H up and down. She turned back to F9A and smiled in that oddly human way again, and kicked her. F9A slid ten feet or so, curling into the fetal position to minimize damage to important components.

_She was lying on the ground, her whole body a twisted mass of pain centered around her stomach. Her ears ringing was the only sound she could hear, and the pain was so unbearable that all she wanted was to curl up into a ball and die. But then a man was there and she looked up into his face. He was big and scary, but he was crying as he pulled her up onto his lap. He was trying to...make her comfortable? She tried to smile at him as she desperately wrapped her arms around his midsection, her fist knotting the back of his shirt. She turned her head painfully to look at the one who had hurt her so badly, and saw-_

M9H's fist struck the back of Sarah's head, _hard_, and she staggered forward, tripping over F9A's body. F9A shot a shocked look at the mute and usually immobile M9H, who staggered forward, expressionless, his hands gripped into fists. He turned his head to look at her, then sharply toward the exit. F9A's eyes widened and she returned to her feet even as Sarah did the same behind her.

"I am going to deconstruct you," Sarah said, her voice modulator going low and creepy. F9A darted past, utterly ignored as Sarah went after M9H.

She threw the door open, trying to ignore the harsh smell of overworked electronics as Sarah violently dismantled the robot who had saved her. F9A looked frantically up and down the alley she found herself in, and took off in a random direction. While the planning of the city had resulted in what to most outsiders was little more than a maze, F9A had a map of the place among the data she possessed, and quickly set about trying to figure out a place to hide and find the equipment she might need to repair herself after Sarah's attack. Perhaps a small garage...some place where she could hide for a day or so. The artificial skin covering her body had been damaged in the attack, ripped open wide where Sarah had kicked her, and the flimsy, grease-smeared shirt she had been wearing for the past three weeks was doing little to hide the damage-

_Another man stood over her and the scary man she was clinging to, a dark featureless shape that stood out against the sky. "Come on, this isn't healthy, man."_

F9A stumbled and almost fell, but caught her balance at the last second and staggered over against a wall as flashes of-what? Video? Memory?-zipped through her processing unit.

_A terrified man ran past, shouting-_

She fell to her knees, denting the protective plating over them as she clutched at her head. She was confused; her actions didn't make sense...! Her processors were located deep within her torso, not in her head! She shook her head to clear it, another inexplicable action, and staggered back to her feet again.

_One of the first to respond to the emergency signal, she made it to the gate just in time to see the army of robots coming up out of the river. She pointed her staff and chanted the key phrase to unlock her magic-_

F9A took off running, doing her best to ignore the stiffness in her joints and damaged midsection. She burst out of the alley at a tremendous speed and was suddenly amidst a large crowd of people scrambling to get out of her way. One elderly man wasn't fast enough and she was going far, far too quickly to stop in time, so she stomped her foot down on her next step and launched herself through the air. She hit the ground forty feet away, something in her left knee locked up and she tumbled to the ground and rolled into a lamppost, taking it down and damaging her right hip and left shoulder as well. She lay there for a moment, pounding her left knee with her fist until it released, and then dragged herself upright again. She stumbled away from a kind man asking if she needed help, and walked away as quickly as she could, limping badly now that her knee and hip were damaged.

_She heard screaming and watched in horror as a civilian who had been trapped between a wall and the army of robots was crushed. The next thing she knew, something struck her a tremendous blow to the stomach right through her shields and she was flying through the air-_

She stumbled over a curb a little further on and fell hard, scraping the artificial skin on her arms and face. She lay there for a moment, terrified at the confusing sensation that she should be breathing heavily when she didn't even possess lungs, then pushed herself up, absently noting the damage to her artificial skin. Her clothes were old and badly worn, and now had several tears, exposing the damaged artificial skin underneath. The skin covering over her face was also ripped and hanging in several places, and it was all she could do to move herself along under her own power; nevertheless, she felt that, somehow, she had to find a place to hide from the insane prototype FX8-a, 'Sarah'.

She continued on, taking narrower, less used roads wherever possible, until her damaged knee finally gave out and she collapsed on the sidewalk in a section of town with many small, run-down houses. She worked the fingers of one hand into a crack in the concrete and dragged herself forward far enough to reach an ill-maintained fence in front of one of the houses. She grabbed a fencepost and dragged herself forward another two feet.

She had made it halfway to the next house before she heard the sound of a motorcycle coming closer. Her processors were too bogged down with the bizarre visions running through them for her to even begin to consider what her situation must look like, so she continued on, trying to cling to what little bit of reality she could as she dragged herself along.

The motorcycle came to a screeching halt and someone ran up to her, shouting, but she ignored the man's worried tone and reached out for something else to pull herself along. Only, when she grabbed the base of the small tree and pulled, something in her shoulder exploded and spewed sparks high into the air. She screamed, more from mental shock than anything else, and then the man was kneeling beside her and turning her over. He knelt over her, a dark shape outlined against the sky, and spoke. She screamed again, louder than before, and something in her vocal system popped and the sound became scratchy. Somehow, impossibly, she knew that voice.

It had been one of the last things she had heard before she died.

* * *

Hakase's frown deepened as she gently prodded a heavily shielded box within the body of the destroyed robot that had attacked her new lab tech Ai. She had had the feeling for quite some time that the robot was still 'alive', in spite of the massive damage it had received from Rally. The internal arrangement of components was quite unusual as well. Extremely familiar, and yet like nothing she could remember ever having come across before. In fact, it was almost like...she paused.

"No way..." She put her tools down on the table and rushed over to the computer that held the schematics for their various projects. She brought up the plans for one of Chachamaru's early prototype bodies, and nodded to herself. 'I knew it!' she thought. No wonder the layout of components and their integration of magic circles had seemed familiar; they were almost certainly a more advanced version of this early prototype, discarded because of the inherent fragility of the system. But who had built the robot? It most definitely had _not_ come out of Hakase's lab, _that_ was for sure. She would never have used such common materials to build such important components. Some of the parts looked like they had come straight off the shelf from Radio Shack!

She sat back in her chair, deep in thought as she tried to recall the name of the professor who had helped her draw up the plans, when a sudden movement from the examination table startled her. She swiftly turned to look and gaped for a moment as the robot's remaining arm came up and hesitantly prodded at the table it was lying on. Its blind explorations led its hand up onto its battered and broken body, and the whole thing jerked in what could only have been surprise as it felt for the outer plating that was simply no longer there.

Hakase approached carefully; there was no telling how it would react if she touched it. The sheer damage the thing had sustained should have rendered it inoperable on the spot; her exploratory surgery on it had shown most of its major components to be reduced to little more than cracked and melted masses of metal and plastic, and yet...it was still moving. She thought back to the magic circles integrated into its design, and a horrifying thought entered her mind.

She paused just out of reach of the robot, which seemed to be on the verge of panic and it tried to move legs that no longer worked and an arm that simply wasn't there anymore. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and spoke.

"Can you hear me?"

The response was immediate. The robot's badly damaged body jerked, and Hakase barely managed to save it from falling off the table by lunging forward and throwing her arms across it to haul it back up as its arm flailed. She burned her arm on an overheating circuit and jerked away, cursing as she hurried over to the first aid cabinet to treat the injury. When she returned, the robot seemed to have calmed down, and was gently probing the more damaged areas of its body. She decided to try again.

"Can you hear me?"

The robot's torso shifted slightly, and it laid its hand down carefully.

"Do you understand what I am saying? If you understand me, raise your arm." The ruined robot raised its arm, and Hakase had an idea. "If I got a pencil and some paper, do you think you could write?"

It didn't respond, but she got the impression that it was at least listening. She opened a drawer and quickly retrieved a pencil and notebook. She gently pressed the pencil into the robot's hand and guided it to the paper, where it quickly began writing, much to her surprise, in English.

_Where am I? What happened? _

The robot's movements trailed off and its hand sat still for a long moment, as if it was considering how to phrase the next question.

_Am I dead?_

Hakase looked at the sheet of paper for a long, long time before she replied. When she did, her voice cracked as she spoke. "W-what's your name?"

The robot paused, fumbling with the pencil, and then began to write. As it did, Hakase's eyes widened as the terrible truth of the situation struck home.

_My name is Elizabeth Ashdown, from England. What is wrong with me? Is this Mahora?_

Hakase's throat went dry. She knew that name; it was one that anyone familiar with the robot attack incident six years ago would know. Elizabeth Ashdown had been a young, energetic teacher from England, who just so happened to have a little skill in support magic; shields and other things of that nature, mostly. She had been one of the four fatalities resulting from the attack; she had died trying to protect the injured when the robots overran the front lines. She had held them back just long enough for the wounded to be cleared; without her sacrifice, dozens would have died, trampled under the army of robots.

The woman's soul had been captured after death and attached to the robot body lying on the table before her.

* * *

_**Notes**: This chapter references events that occurred in the story Still Waters 2: Another Turn, which can be found on this site through my profile._


	7. Chapter 7

Gotokuji fumbled with his cell phone as he stood in the living room of his small house, looking down at the robot girl lying on his floor. Her eyes were shut as if she was sleeping, but...did robots sleep? He wasn't sure, and he did know it seemed sort of odd that he had brought her a pillow and a blanket, but...somehow he couldn't help but feel that it was the right thing to do, that she needed to be protected. It was the same thing he felt toward children, most girls, and many women, and he couldn't just make himself ignore it. There was another sharp _pop_ followed by the crackling sound of sparks, muffled by the robot girl's outer plating, and he frowned.

He looked back down at his cell phone, flipped it open, went as far as selecting his young friend Inoue Ai's phone number, and paused, looking back down at the robot girl.

He almost hadn't been able to believe his eyes when he had spotted her dragging herself along the sidewalk; he had almost wrecked his bike, in fact. But when he had parked it and run up to her, the dark trail behind her which he had initially thought was blood turned out to be oil, and the girl had turned out to be a badly damaged robot. Getting her home had been a tough job on his bike, too, especially since upon seeing him, she had promptly screamed and apparently done the robotic equivalent of passing out. Luckily his home was only a hundred yards or so away, so he hadn't had to go far to borrow a wheelbarrow, though getting her into it had been quite a job by himself. He had known she would be heavy, but _that_ heavy? No way. He just hoped none of the neighbors had looked outside just in time to catch him dragging what looked like an unconscious girl into his house.

He turned back to the cell phone and dialed.

* * *

Ai stalked angrily along one of the footpaths close to the woods, with Tanaka following close behind. "F-freaking idiot," she mumbled. "I-I'm _not_ in l-l-love with a robot, I'm _not_...!"

Tanaka remained silent.

"W-where does she g-get off talking to me like th-that?" Ai demanded. "I-I'm not s-some kind of w-w-weirdo!"

Her cell phone began ringing, so she stopped and pulled it out. "It's from Gotokuji-nii-san," she said absently. She didn't really want to talk to anybody right now, but he had never, ever called her cell phone, so it might be important. She heaved a sigh and pressed a button. "Hello?"

"_Ai-chan?_"

Ai sighed and threw herself into the role of a normal girl. "Yes? What did you need?"

Gotokuji paused for a moment. "_There's something here I think you should see._"

"What do you mean?"

"_You know that robot of yours? Well, I think I found another one. She's a girl, too, and something's wrong with her. Do you think you could come over here and give her a look?"_

Ai sighed a well practiced much-put-upon sigh. "I suppose. I'll be right over."

Why did everyone seem to think she was some sort of robot expert? It didn't make any sense...! She snapped the cell phone shut and put it into her pocket. "Come on Tanaka, let's go to Gotokuji-nii's house."

* * *

The mad prototype unit FX8-a, designated 'Sarah', looked up at the sky and smiled as she used the local cell phone network to work out the location of the two callers she had just overheard through one of her drones. The call had originated from a location on the far side of the city, in a residential section. She started out onto the sidewalks, her eyes too bright, her grin too wide, a real sense of _wrongness_ about her in spite of the outward beauty of her lifelike robotic body.

* * *

_I don't understand,_ the robot wrote.

Hakase sighed and rubbed her forehead. She was no psychologist; she _really_ needed to get someone else in here to help with this...! She wished, not for the first time, that Ai hadn't stormed out earlier. She had a feeling that that girl, even at her young age, understood the human psyche far more completely the most people ever would. She sighed and tried again.

"Well...you died, and then someone attached you to this robot body. I don't know _why_ they would do it, but they did."

The robot was still for a long, long moment.

_But why?_

Chachamaru stepped into the room in one of her less advanced backup bodies before Hakase could reply, and looked warily at the remains of the robot that had attacked her. "I have become fully functional again, Hakase," she said.

"That's good," Hakase said absently as she tried to puzzle out what to do with the damaged robot and the soul attached to it. "She's badly damaged, but she's still functional enough to communicate," she said, gesturing idly at the notebook lying next to the robot on the examination table. "Think you're comfortable talking to her?" she asked.

Chachamaru frowned, but nodded. There was no way the robot could attack her again; not damaged as it was. "Should I request Rally to come as well?"

Hakase crossed her arms and paced a lap around the room before deciding. "Hmmm... Yes. But be sure to warn her to turn off her weapon systems. I don't want her getting angry and _really_ destroying it."

"Understood."

* * *

Ai and Tanaka arrived at Gotokuji's house to find a trail of oil leading up to the front door, which was locked. Ai sighed and dug out her key and let herself in with Tanaka right behind. Inside, they followed the trail of oil to the kitchen, where they found Gotokuji kneeling over the damaged robot. He looked up when they entered and nodded at them.

"Hey, I'm glad you two are here. Can you take a look?" he asked.

Something in his voice, a note of worry, made Ai bite back on the retort that had been on the tip of her tongue only a moment before. She sighed, putting on the personality of an adventuring master surgeon, and knelt over the body. "Scissors," she said sharply, holding out her hand as she looked at the ripped and ruined clothing the robot wore. She heard Gotokuji rummaging through a drawer, and felt the presence of Tanaka inching closer. Gotokuji put the scissors in her hand, and she quickly cut away the robot's clothing. She paused at Gotokuji's sharp intake of breath. "Anime anatomy...her body is the correct shape, but certain vital parts are missing," she said as if speaking to a young and rather stupid student. Tanaka moved around her over to the other side of the robot and knelt down, his face still expressionless. "Forceps," she said, holding out her hand. Gotokuji gave her a pair of kitchen tongs a moment later. She looked at them, arched her eyebrow, and gave the man a look. She turned back to the damaged robot and began probing around the areas where its artificial skin had been damaged.

"Injuries to the knees, elbows, the fingers and palms of the hands, the face, the left side of the head, both shoulders, the entire left thigh..." She paused, looking at the 'patient's' eyes, which had just fluttered open. Her throat went dry as the robot's eyes drifted over and focused on her own. '_So human...!' _There was a moment where neither one moved, then the robot girl let out a startled, somehow breathless-sounding scream and scrambled back into Tanaka, who took her by the shoulders to keep her from escaping. She looked up at him, her eyes went big as saucers, and she screamed again, higher and louder this time, and abruptly went limp.

"...that's not good," Gotokuji said after a moment's silence.

Ai realized she was gaping at the girl robot and shut her mouth. "Tanaka, help me move her to-" What she said next was lost in the sound of the front door being kicked in. Ai barely had time to turn around before a strange woman stalked into the room, grinning brightly, and froze, locking eyes with Tanaka.

"You're perfect...!" the stranger said.

"Threat level red, initiating combat," Tanaka said.

"Not in the house, not in the house!" Gotokuji wailed, but the strange woman shoved him aside and swung at Tanaka, who blocked with his forearm.

"Subject Inoueai, take the patient and escape," he stated.

"No! F9A belongs to _me_!" the stranger said, but Tanaka struck her in the midsection with a sweeping blow that sent her flying back into the living room.

He turned to look at Ai. "Go."

Gotokuji staggered back into the room, rubbing his head. "Ah! My kitchen!"

Ai grabbed him by the hand and yanked him over to the fallen robot girl, who the stranger had called F9A. "Help me!"

Gotokuji gave the fallen robot a calculating look, and turned to Tanaka. "Don't fight in the house!" He turned back to the robot girl and helped Ai get her sitting upright. "Oof, she's heavy," he said as the two of them dragged her outside through the back door while Tanaka held off the other robot.

"Do you have a car?" Ai asked when they reached the back porch, looking around. She didn't see anything in the overgrown backyard but a few ramshackle sheds and piles of motorcycle parts.

"No, but I've been working on something almost as good," he replied, then winced at a big _bang_ from inside the house. He sighed and grabbed the robot girl's arms. "Come on, the big shed in the corner."

Ai helped him drag the naked robot girl along, accompanied by more sounds of destruction from inside the house. When they reached the shed, Gotokuji took out a keyring and unlocked the door just as Tanaka came flying backwards through the wall of the house.

"Tanaka!"

"My house!"

The strange robot woman leaped through the new exit, spotted F9A's unresponsive form, and started toward them until Tanaka grabbed her by the ankle and threw her into the side of another shed on the other side of the yard, which collapsed in a mass of cheap roofing material, splinters, and broken glass.

"No! My Beemer's in there!"

Tanaka returned to his feet and looked at Ai. "Go," he said, more urgent this time. Ai stood there a moment, biting her lip, and then the pile of rubble that had until recently been a shed lurched.

"D-don't die!" she ordered, then shoved Gotokuji aside and pulled the shed door open to reveal...

...an ancient, beat-up, rusty motorcycle with a sidecar attached.

She whirled on Gotokuji. "_This_ is 'almost as good'?" she demanded, incredulous in order to hide the panic she was feeling as the situation spiraled rapidly out of control.

"Hey! This baby's a classic!" he replied as he quickly moved around her and scooped some spare parts out of the sidecar. "Come on, let's get her in here." Together, the two of them somehow managed to wrap the unresponsive robot girl in a blanket and wrestled her heavy body up and over the edge of the sidecar and settled in.

"Ugh, she's heavy," Gotokuji said as he grabbed a couple of motorcycle helmets from the rack on the wall. He tossed one to Ai and put his own on. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Ai paused; she could hear the sounds of the two robots fighting in the yard and her false persona crumbled. "...b-but what about Tanaka? I c-c-can't leave him like this!"

Gotokuji got on the bike and fiddled around with switches and buttons for a moment. "He can take care of himself; you saw him throw that other one across the yard like she didn't weigh a thing. Besides, he can fight better without having you to worry about. Now come on!"

Ai stood there indecisively, however, until a hard thump against the shed's outer wall sent a handful of tools clattering to the floor. She yelped and mounted the bike, jamming the helmet onto her head. Gotokuji kick-started the motorcycle, gunned the throttle, and they were off. Ai looked back just in time to see Tanaka come crashing through the wall of the shed, and the strange robot woman stepping inside through the hole. She glanced up and their eyes met, but before the robot woman could start after them, Tanaka grabbed her from behind and threw her back through the wall again; the shed lurched and began to lean drastically to the side. Ai turned away, trying to hide her tears as she clung to Gotokuji and buried her face in his back.

* * *

Prototype Unit FX8-a 'Sarah' was annoyed. When her drones had caught that cell phone call she thought she had recovered her maintenance tech, the submissive young robot F9A, but when she arrived at the location and entered the building...there was _another_.

A male robot. Bigger and stronger than any of her brothers or sisters, for a quarter second she had thought him to be slow moving and clumsy, as the mute brother she had destroyed in the warehouse had been. Then he had shifted to look at her and she saw his balance. At first, she had thought she might have found a partner; his internal design was extremely advanced, just as much as her own, in fact, if in a different direction. Obviously a superior model to any other she had observed thus far. But...

Immediately upon sighting her, he shifted into combat mode.

If she had been human, she might have sighed; she might have pleaded with him to not fight. As she was a robot, she shifted into combat mode immediately and swung her fist; he blocked her attack with ease and grabbed her arm to keep her from attacking again, then turned his head back toward the two humans who were dragging away _her_ maintenance tech. "Subject Inoueai, take the patient and escape."

It had all gone downhill after that.

And now here she found herself flying through the air, accompanied by splinters and pieces of the shed wall she had just been thrown through. She hit the ground rolling and came up on her feet, leaping aside just in time to avoid the Tanaka unit's fist as he came after her, jumping through the air. She grabbed an empty birdbath and threw it at his head, but he didn't even bother to dodge, instead opting to swat the heavy stone dish out of the air with a backhanded blow. Sarah tried to circle away, but the Tanaka unit deftly moved to block any escape. This opponent was _good_. Nothing at all like the pitiful units that were her brothers and sisters back at the warehouse. "You are a very advanced unit."

No response.

Sarah observed the Tanaka unit as he watched her. His design was truly spectacular in a way that was almost frightening. He was, at the very least, near the level she was herself. Sarah was a spectacularly built prototype, designed to be the head of an entire network of drones, though she was still not complete. Her creator had died before she or her drones could be completed; she needed that maintenance tech...! She tried to circle away from Tanaka again, but he moved to block her. She shifted the other way, lamenting the unfinished status of her flight equipment, and he stepped in her way again, moving a little closer.

"Let me pass, I need that unit."

"No. The patient is under Inoueai's protection. You will not pass," Tanaka said.

Sarah was getting annoyed; this impasse had to come to an end, and soon. She sent a command to some of her drones, and they began to move.

* * *

Hakase looked at her cell phone and frowned. Ai wasn't picking up. "Where _is_ that girl...?" she wondered aloud as she flipped it shut. Surely Ai-chan wasn't _that_ angry at being teased? Hakase sighed again; it seemed as if nothing was going right today. Sure, she had received a new specimen, but it was badly damaged and had someone's soul attached to it; it would soon be taken out of her hands. Her assistants were all gone or busy with other projects; she _really_ needed Ai here to help her with the diagnostics...

She flipped the cell phone open again and stood there, looking at it. Who could help, who could help... She began dialing a number.

* * *

Haruna picked up her cell phone, popped it open, and pressed a button. "Hello?" she said, barely paying attention as she finished touching up her most recent page of manga. "Oh, hey Hakase. What's up?" she asked, putting down her pen as one of her assistants looked up. "Ai? Okay, sure, I can do that. Just sit tight, I'll see what I can do."

Her two assistants looked at each other curiously. "Saotome-sensei? Is something wrong?"

Haruna flipped her cell phone shut and put it into her pocket, then grinned at her two assistants. "No, something just came up and I have to go. Keep up the good work!" she said as she darted out through the door before they could respond.

Haruna's first call was to Kazumi, who agreed to help spot Ai with her camera drones. Kazumi called back twenty minutes later with some rather disturbing news: Ai was spotted on the East end of the city, crying, riding on the back of a motorcycle with what could only be a robot girl wrapped up in a blanket in the sidecar. The driver's face was obscured by his helmet, but due to the behavior of the motorcycle, the trio appeared to be fleeing from something; what that something was, was revealed a moment later when an odd looking skinless robot jumped off of a rooftop and, but for the quick thinking and steel nerves of the driver, would have landed on top of the motorcycle, putting a quick end to their escape. As it was, the unknown robot hit the road hard and stopped moving.

'Okay, I can deal with this,' Haruna thought in anticipation as a slow grin stretched across her face almost from ear to ear. It had been far, far too long since the last time she had been allowed to have a little...'fun'. "Heheh~"

* * *

Tanaka stood facing Sarah in the shattered remains of Gotokuji's back yard, hardly looking as if he had even been in a fight. Sarah, on the other hand...

Though her expression was of an oddly inhuman pleasantness, her eyes a little too big, her smile a little too wide, her stance had gone from the aggressive display she had shown upon entering the house earlier to retrieve her maintenance tech to something far different; in a human, her stance would have indicated something akin to panic setting in.

Thus far she had received no serious damage, but neither had she dealt any. If anything, she had come off the worse for this conflict. It was time to leave.

She watched him carefully for a moment, slowly circling toward the house. If she had observed the architecture correctly...

Tanaka followed slowly, watching, as she stepped up onto the back porch and backed in through the door.

He followed her inside, and they made their slow way into the kitchen. Sarah waited until she found the right spot, then paused as Tanaka moved to stand in front of her, ten feet away.

"You could join me," Sarah said conversationally.

"No, I will not. I am with subject Inoueai," he replied.

Sarah's facial features twitched as mixed signals ran through her processors. "Then you will be assimilated," she said as signals that could be interpreted as 'anger' flooded her system, blocking out all else and threatening to overload her with their intensity.

"No, I will not," Tanaka said firmly, stepping forward to attack.

The 'anger' signals overwhelmed her system, there was an electronic *pop* and sizzle, and Sarah let out a roar, punched down through the floor of the kitchen, and ripped up the heavy wooden floor joist she and Tanaka were standing above, disturbing the floor supports of the entire house. The kitchen floor lurched under the weight of the two robots and she hissed at him one final time and leaped outside through the window above the sink; she hit the ground running fast as the floor cracked and finally collapsed under Tanaka, dropping him into the basement and burying him in debris.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Author's notes**: Er...sorry about the delay. Since November of 2011 (written in early April of 2013). Er...yeah. Sorry about that. I had this sitting on my computer, but honestly I just forgot about it until I started going through my (paper) notes and found my writeup of how this story is supposed to go. Anyway, I'm guessing it'll have something like three chapters after this one before it's through. Again, sorry about the delay! _

* * *

Gotokuji coasted the motorcycle up the ramp to the large roller door in the side of the building. He felt Ai trembling as she clung to him from behind. She was so frail; she tried so hard to give off the appearance of strength, to show the world she wasn't someone to mess with, but it was all an act. No matter what she did to convince others, she was still a young girl living in a boarding school in a strange city with her parents living miles and miles away. He gently eased out of her grip and got off the motorcycle. A few moments with the right tools, and the door's lock was no longer a problem. He eased the motorcycle into the building, gave Ai a flashlight from the supply bag he had thrown into the sidecar with the robot girl before fleeing his home, and moved to roll down the door.

* * *

Two police officers pulled up on a small side street in a run down, yet quiet section of town in front of a pile of rubble that had been, not too long ago, a house. The two officers got out of the car and stood looking at the ruins for a moment.

"Ever see anything like that?" one of them said.

The second officer shook his head. "Not since the earthquake that took out grandma's house ten years ago."

"What was the name of the family that lived here?" the first one asked as he stepped over the collapsed fence into the yard.

"Gotokuji," the second officer said, looking at a small notebook. "One resident in his twenties. I wonder what happened?"

The first officer approached the rubble. "Dunno." The east quarter of the house was still standing. "Hey!" he shouted. "Anybody in there?" he paused for a moment, listening for a response, before approaching more closely and trying to peer into the empty spaces in the rubble.

"I don't think you should get so clo-"

"Shh! I heard something," the first officer said, holding up his hand to quiet his partner. He leaned closer to the rubble. "Hello? Is anyone there?" This time, there was some definite noise from somewhere deep in the rubble. The first officer quickly turned to the other. "Get on the radio! We have someone trapped, possibly injured. Tell them—whoa!" the cop shouted as the whole structure shuddered underneath him. He scrambled back out of the way as a mostly intact piece of roof slid off the pile and smashed on the ground. The pile of rubble shifted noticeably again, accompanied by the sound of straining timbers from somewhere deep inside.

The second officer, a newbie still in his first week on the job, drew his gun in a panic and pointed it at the pile of rubble, his hands shaking. "W-w-what the hell was _that_?!" he screeched at his partner.

The other officer turned around stiffly and began striding toward the car. "Come on," he said, trying to make his voice sound calm. He was a twenty year veteran; he didn't want to let the newbie know he was scared half to death of what might be coming up out of that ruined house at any moment. He had worked Mahora for over twenty years; he was well aware of what might show up. "This is out of our jurisdiction."

"O-out of our _jurisdiction_?" the second officer asked, his tone incredulous. The pile of rubble surged upward a few feet and collapsed again, and his face, if possible, went three shades whiter. "A-ah, I-I-I-I see, o-out of our j-jurisdiction, yeah—_kyaaa!" _he screamed like a little girl as a fist battered its way out of the side of the pile, sending splinters and bits of cheap building material flying across the yard. Then a huge man with spiky blond hair and wearing ripped clothing heaved himself up out of the ruined house, stood up on what had been the front porch, and looked at the two officers.

"Come on come on come _on_!" the older cop hissed, but his new partner was frozen in place, looking as if a slight breeze could have knocked him over as the big man walked straight up to him, only stopping when the barrel of the young policeman's gun was against his stomach. He looked down at the newbie.

"I need your gun." After the officer stammered for a moment but didn't appear to be ready to hand it over, Tanaka reached up and gently pried the gun out of his hands, put it in his pocket, and walked over toward the police cruiser, where the older officer, quick on the uptake and easily recognizing that particular model of robot from his time doing security at the Mahora Festival six years before, was holding the door open for him.

"H-here are the keys; j-just try to take care of it, okay?" he asked pitifully. Tanaka just looked down at him for a moment, then took the keys and got inside the car. The older cop noticed with a bizarre sense of unreality that the giant stranger made sure to put his seatbelt on, and barely managed to step out of the way in time to avoid having his feet run over as the man drove off.

When he felt as if he could take two steps without wetting himself, the younger officer stumbled over to where the older officer stood looking down the street in the direction the cruiser had disappeared. They stood there side by side for some time before the younger officer managed to get his tongue in working order again.

"D...does that happen often?"

The older officer, upon hearing the younger officer's voice, recalled his position and straightened his back a little. He tried to appear nonchalant as he moved toward the sidewalk. "In this town? That'd be an M-1190."

"M-1190?" the younger officer asked.

"The code for Humanoid Robot. The 'M' stands for Mahora Special Code, to differentiate it from standard police code. 1190 is for 'cruiser lost, robot involved'. Anyway, in this town that's about the least exciting thing you'll see. Come on, the station's a mile away."

"There's a code for something as specific as a robot stealing a police cruiser...?" the young cop asked, bemused as the two of them set off down the street. "But...did you see? No way he was just some 'humanoid robot'! That had to be like, the Termina-"

"_Don't_!" the older cop said. "Don't say it."

"But-"

"Don't say it. Just...don't say it. You'll be happier that way. Let's go, we have a long walk ahead of us."

* * *

Tanaka's thoughts moved rapidly as he drove away from the destruction of the residence belonging to the man subject Inoueai referred to as 'Gotokuji-nii-san. Gotokuji-nii-san and subject Inoueai had escaped with the _other_ foreign unit; this was good. The foreign unit that had tried to attack subject Inoueai had also fled; this was bad. He felt that he could trust Gotokuji with the safety of Inoueai until he found them; however, he did not know how to find them. Therefore, he must find someone who would.

The answer came to him an instant later.

He hit the brakes hard enough to lock up the wheels in the middle of the busy street, put the car in reverse, and backed up until he had enough room to maneuver the car until it was pointed down a side street that led off in the direction of the university, put the car in gear, and floored the accelerator.

* * *

Prototype unit FX8-a, 'Sarah', staggered through the door and back into the decrepit laboratory where she had been created. She stumbled over the remains of the large male robot she had destroyed earlier and collapsed on the floor.

She found she couldn't get back up; there was no power in her elbows or knees.

This was bad.

She ran some diagnostics on various aspects of her system, and the results were not what she would have wanted. Joint damage was severe; Her false skin, plating, and the materials that supported them would be fine for the most part, but the artificial tendons and ligaments in her body had been overused and overheated in her fight with the foreign male robot and subsequent flight, and would need time to return to their normal states. Her scanning function hit an error and locked up for a moment, and when she came to again, more than thirty minutes had passed and several of her drones were standing around her, adding their processing power to hers. She marked her private scanning functions as untrusted and set her drones to carry her to a table where she could lay and recuperate. She waited impatiently as they picked her up and moved her over to the table top.

Her components were top of the the line, her processors blazingly fast, and yet here she was, barely able to move her body due to joint damage. She would have laughed had the situation not been so dire. Without her maintenance tech, the unit those...those _humans_ had stolen, things would begin to get bad, very quickly.

Her optical devices scanned the room as she tried to come up with a suitable plan, and came to rest on the broken remains of the large robot. She looked at the remains and pondered over the newly hatched idea in her mind for a long, long time, long for a robot, anyway, and two seconds later sent the order to the drones standing around useless. The male robot was reduced to its individual components in a very short time, as was the ancient one on the ground by the makeshift charging station. Sarah used her network to inspect the pieces, and the best ones were quickly laid out on a table placed next to the one her body was currently lying on. She paused for a brief moment, wondering if this was the right thing to do, and then brushed the stray thought off as inconsequential and took control of the most advanced drone in order to perform the procedures herself.

* * *

The police car screeched to a halt on the sidewalk mere inches from the front door of the building that housed the main robotics laboratory at the university. Several security guards rushed out to confront the driver, but the enormous spiky haired man that got out of the car ignored them and walked quickly through the front door. He ignored anyone who attempted to speak to him and headed straight for the elevator, nearly knocking down a burly security guard who attempted to get in front of him. He pressed the button, waited for the elevator to arrive for a moment, and set off at a quick pace for the stairs when the elevator failed to show, leaving everyone in the lobby speechless. They were used to all sorts coming and going at odd hours, but this was more than they knew how to deal with; at least Chachamaru and Rally-chan had the courtesy to reply when asked a question...!

Tanaka's long legs allowed him to take the stairs three at a time and he did so at a very rapid pace, nearly bowling over a young intern who had the misfortune to run into him on the stairs while heading down with a handful of papers. Tanaka continued on until he reached the floor where a certain lab was located, and all but sprinted down the hallway, and nearly wrenched the door of the lab from its hinges as he opened it.

* * *

Hakase looked up from the cold cup ramen she was eating and raised her eyebrow as Tanaka barreled into the room and stalked up to her.

Hakase took the time to swallow the food in her mouth and carefully set down the old cup ramen before turning to Tanaka. "Well hello to you too," she said wryly. "Is something wrong?"

"Subject Inoueai is in danger," Tanaka said.

Hakase's expression changed immediately, and she pressed a button sending out a signal to Chachamaru to come back to the lab right away. "What happened?"

Tanaka just looked at her for a moment.

"Oh, right. Hang on a sec, let's see..." Hakase said as she slid open a drawer and rummaged around in it for a moment before coming up with a usb cable. "C'mere," she said. Tanaka knelt down, and she plugged it into his ear and then into the computer she had been working at. She set the computer to give control to Tanaka, and sat back to wait. She didn't have to wait long, however, as video captured from Tanaka's internal cameras filled the screen. Hakase leaned forward to watch.

* * *

By the time Chachamaru had arrived, Hakase was dressed up to go outside. She tossed Chachamaru a thumb drive. "Watch the video files in that, and find out what you can about the foreign units. I have to go check something out. Be ready to come to my position at a moment's notice. If I call you, it'll be important."

"Understood. Be careful, Hakase."

Hakase looked back at her and grinned. "Careful? Where's the fun in that?"

* * *

Haruna met up with Hakase and Tanaka at the remains of Gotokuji's house.

"Hey," she said, waving her hand as she strolled up.

Hakase glanced up at Haruna from where she was crouched down on the ground, putting something into a plastic bag. "Hello. Do you know where she went?" Hakase asked as she stood up and stuffed the bag into the pocket of her lab coat.

Haruna shook her head. "I lost track of her somewhere in the middle of all those warehouses over on the East end of town. She could be anywhere over there." She glanced up at Tanaka, who stood silently by her side and yet somehow conveyed the sense that he was incredibly impatient to be going after the girl he had somehow become attached to.

"We need to find that new unit and keep an eye on her too," Hakase said as she led the way back to the car. "I have Chachamaru on it, but I don't want her facing something like that without a _lot_ of backup."

Haruna cocked an eyebrow at that. "You think the new one's that dangerous?"

Hakase paused in the act of opening the car door and looked back up at her friend. "Don't you?"


	9. Chapter 9

_**Author's Notes**: It's July 17th, 2013...yeah, sorry about the delay AGAIN. Anyway, this story's totally written out now, I just have to iron out a few wrinkles in Chapter 11, and then it'll be ready to post. Four years is a little (A LOT) excessive for an 11 chapter story, but I hope it's at least enjoyable._

* * *

Inoue Ai sat crosslegged on the dusty floor of the abandoned warehouse, looking down at the robot girl laid out on a wood pallet in front of her. She frowned; her job now would have been _so _much easier if they had been able to get her up onto one of the tables, but the robot girl was just too heavy, not to mention how awkward it was trying to move her when she had gone all limp. Gotokuji came in through the doorway a moment later and she looked up at him. "Did you find anything?"

He shook his head. "Nothing really useful," he said as he placed an old toolbox on the floor next to her. She popped the rusty latches and opened the top to reveal a jumble of assorted tools. She could probably make do, but they weren't the sort of tools one really needed when doing delicate work; it looked more like the tool set of a janitor who didn't have many occasions to fix things than something any dedicated repairman would have.

Ai heaved a sigh and turned her attention back to the robot girl, still lying unresponsive before her. "This...is gonna take a while."

* * *

Prototype Unit FX8-a, 'Sarah', looked down at her body through the eyes of one of her robot drones as she replaced her elbow joint with a much more primitive—if more solidly constructed—one scavenged from one of the units she had forcibly deactivated earlier. The fit wasn't perfect, but at least her elbow worked...

She set aside some of her processing power to cycle through the information being sent in by the drones she had sent out earlier. A warning message popped up about running too many operations, but she ignored it and redirected processing power from some of the more minor tasks running in the background and focused instead on finishing up her elbow.

Sarah's consciousness was stretched woefully thin across almost two dozen units, and keeping up with all of them was sapping the processing power made available by her drones; and yet she _had_ to keep as many of them out scouring the city as possible to find her maintenance tech, that F9A unit. Without Unit F9A, she wouldn't be able to perform maintenance on her primary frame with any degree of skill; even now she was causing significant damage by substituting such primitive parts for her primary frame's damaged joints, but she couldn't let her primary frame remain immobile, either.

It was irritating, that was what it was, she decided.

A roof tile moving under the foot of one of her drones drew her attention and much-needed processing power in order to regain the drone unit's balance before it could fall, which resulted in another drone halfway across town running straight into a brick chimney, doing significant damage to its right knee and hip before it rolled off the roof completely and she lost contact. The sudden loss of a piece of herself shocked her to her core.

Sarah bit back on her volatile emotions before she could let her anger get the better of her. She couldn't get anything done when she was spread so thin; the narrow save of the first drone had resulted in the total loss of the second, while a third had nearly been hit by a car and a fourth had almost stepped right off the roof it had been running across, all due to half a second's lapse of concentration. Had she been human, she would have sighed. There was no way around it. She did the only thing she could do: she called back half the drones she had sent out into the city, and set aside the tools she was using to patch her primary frame back into some form of useability.

This...this was going to take a while.

* * *

"Oho, what's this?" Kazumi said to herself as she looked at the big screen she had had Chisame set up in her apartment a long time before. One of her camera drones had spotted something suspicious. She had it move in cautiously for a closer look, and whistled.

It was an unfamiliar robot, lying sprawled out on the ground as if it had fallen from high above, a spray of bricks on the ground around it.

Suspicious indeed.

Kazumi put down the soft drink she had been sipping and picked up her cell phone.

* * *

Haruna kept one hand on the wheel as she fished around in her pocket for her ringing cell phone.

"Hey, where'd you learn to drive?!" someone demanded as they flew past in the opposite direction, horn blaring.

"Mahora School of Kicking Your Ass!" she yelled back at the other driver, who was already long gone. She turned her attention back to the road and swerved back into her lane, narrowly avoiding a furniture truck.

"Buncha crazy people around here, I swear," Haruna said, weaving back and forth to work off some frustration as she fiddled with her cell phone and finally got it open. She brought it up to her ear. "Y'ello."

-**Hey, Haruna-**

"It's Kazumi," Haruna said to her passengers. Hakase sat curled up in a ball in the passenger seat, completely unresponsive, while Tanaka's emotionless face nevertheless seemed to be giving her a scathing look. "Heya Kazumi. What's up?"

**-Found something you might be interested in. I don't think it's the robot you wanted me to watch for, but it _is_ a robot.-**

"Ah, cool, cool..." Haruna said as she swerved to avoid a pedestrian and took the time to raise her middle finger for him. Someone in the opposing lane beeped their horn at her and she swerved back into her lane. "Where is it?"

**-...you're not...not _driving_, are you?-**

Haruna smirked. "Maybe."

**-H-hey! You can't do that! Remember what happened last time? With the cow? And poor old lady Makishima? You remember what the judge said...!-**

Haruna heaved a sigh. "Yeah, yeah. Thanks for reminding me of that, _mom_. It doesn't matter anyway; we're at my apartment now and I've gotta run up and get something. I guess Tanaka can drive. So," she said as she hit the brakes and the car squealed to a stop, taking up two spaces in front of Haruna's apartment building, with the back end still sticking out into the road. She unhooked her seat belt and turned to the others. "Be right back!" Hakase just gazed at her with big, blank eyes as a little drool spilled from the side of her mouth, while Tanaka continued his stare from earlier. Haruna just waved and got out of the car. "So," she said into her phone. "Where did you say this robot was? Maybe we can have Chachamaru go over and pick it up, whaddaya think?"

* * *

Chachamaru ended the transmission and stood up from her chair, looking from the shattered remains of the robot that had attacked her lying on the table to her little sister Rally, who stood watching her nearby.

"Who called?" Rally asked.

"Haruna-san," Chachamaru replied as she looked back at the broken robot on the table, the robot Rally had done her best to kill while staying within the strict limits Hakase had set for in-town combat. "It seems she has located a damaged foreign unit, and wishes to have one of us retrieve it." Rally cocked her head to the side, and Chachamaru's sisterly instincts made her want to hug the other gynoid. She refrained and looked back at the robot on the table; it couldn't be left alone. She didn't quite know all the details—she _had_ been nonfunctional at the time—but Rally had attacked the robot after it attacked her. To say she was proud of her little sister wouldn't be overstating the truth. However...

"I must retrieve the damaged foreign unit.. Rally-chan, you must not damage this one any more than you have already. Hakase isn't done with it yet," Chachamaru said, looking from the broken robot to Rally.

Rally locked eyes with her a moment, then looked back down at the broken robot for a moment. "...understood."

Chachamaru nodded. She was still nervous leaving her sister alone with the robot, but Rally wouldn't lie to her. "I will return shortly; please prepare worktable three." And then, perhaps, she could view the video files Hakase had given her. Rally nodded solemnly, and Chachamaru, overtaken by some mysterious impulse, reached over and ruffled her sister's artificial hair. Feeling embarrassed for some reason she couldn't quite understand, she spun on her heel and headed for the door, leaving Rally alone with the robot on the table.

* * *

After Rally had finished cleaning up the area around worktable three and left the room to put up the cleaning supplies she had used, she returned to find the strange robot that had attacked her onee-san fumbling around with its one remaining arm, seemingly trying to find something. She edged closer and watched as it found first the notebook lying on the small table next to it, then the pencil it had been using earlier. It picked up the pencil and fumbled with it for a moment before getting it into the right position, then started writing on the notebook. Curious, Rally moved in closer to see what it was writing.

_Is anyone there?_

Rally watched silently. This was the robot that had hurt her onee-san, the robot that tried to hurt one of her classmates. Why should she show it any kindness?

_Someone's there, right? I heard you a moment ago...please answer me._

Rally frowned slightly. She _really_ didn't like this robot. At _all_.

_Please? I'm scared._

Rally's frown deepened. This was becoming troubling. She watched as the robot fumbled with the notebook until it managed to flip to the next page only to accidentally drop the pencil. It immediately startled flailing around in a panic trying to find it, which only resulted in making the pencil roll off the table and fall to the floor. The robot immediately stopped flailing and shuddered, clutching at the notebook as if it was a lifeline.

Rally watched for a long, long, moment, then moved closer and picked up the pencil. The robot shifted on the table, but as its torso was far too damaged for ordinary movement, Rally had no idea what it was trying to do. She put the pencil on the table and stepped back, waiting. The robot hesitantly reached out and found the pencil, and began writing. When it finished, it gestured at the notebook, as if to say 'please read this'. Rally hesitated, but decided to step forward and check it out.

_Hello. My name is Elizabeth Ashdown, and I am a teacher from England._

Rally cocked her head to the side, curious.

* * *

Chachamaru came down for a landing on the roof of the university lab building and took the specially installed elevator down to the lab, lugging an unresponsive robot of a type she hadn't seen before behind her. '_I hope Rally didn't damage that robot...' _she thought to herself as she dragged the foreign unit through the hall to the room where she had left the two together.

She _really_ didn't expect to hear Rally let out a little laugh as she approached the door.

Chachamaru opened the door a crack and peeked inside for a moment, then pushed the door fully open. Rally was standing beside the worktable on which the robot she had demolished earlier was lying. She had a small smile on her her face, which grew when she looked up and spotted Chachamaru.

"Welcome back, onee-san," Rally said as she moved to help Chachamaru with the damaged robot she was carrying.

"Thank you," Chachamaru replied as she heaved the damaged robot up onto the work table and proceeded to take notes on it by speaking into a small recording device. "The new foreign unit, hereafter designated Unknown Unit 2, appears to be incomplete, with makeshift patches welded over missing body panels. Unit is approximately one hundred seventy five centimeters tall with the proportions of an average human female. Those body panels which are present appear well designed for ease of movement, with portions designed to slide over each other on contact..." She went on for several minutes while Rally watched patiently before she moved to the robot's head.

"While Unknown Unit 2's elbow and knee joints are primitive, the detail that went into designing its head makes it seem almost as if it came from a different unit altogether. Though it lacks any form of skin or other body covering, it appears to have been designed with the ability to make a wide range of facial expressions," Chachamaru said as she gently poked at the complex mass of moving parts around the mysterious robot's mouth. "The individual pieces move easily, and the jaw and tongue appear fully functional, though there is no throat. The eyes, as well, seem to have been-" Chachamaru pulled back the metallic eyelids over one of the robot's eyes, revealing a mechanical eyeball of exquisite workmanship. The eye abruptly moved to focus on her and the strange robot shuddered to life. Chachamaru stepped back cautiously, and Rally moved up to stand beside her, already in combat mode.

Unknown Unit 2 sat up on the table and took a moment to inspect its injured knee and hip before turning to face Chachamaru and Rally. "Where is this?"

"The university lab building," Chachamaru said. "You were found in a nonfunctional state in the city. Your frame is unfamiliar to us. Who is your creator?"

The robot blinked at her, its complex eyes letting off an eerie blue glow that was just barely detectable in the well-lit laboratory. "I don't know," the strange gynoid replied; a faint smile that was somehow ghastly marred its features. "Who are you?" it asked as it gingerly slid off the side of the table. Its injured leg promptly collapsed under it, and it grabbed hold of the table to maintain its balance.

Chachamaru eyed the strange gynoid for a moment. Why not answer her? It wasn't as if she and Rally were unknown in town. "I am Karakuri Chachamaru; this is my sister Rally Wheeler. Who are you?"

The gynoid's ghastly smile grew. "Unique units! Wonderful! You must join me; your processing power must be amazing! I simply _must_ add it to my collection...! But first, I suppose introductions are in order," she said, her eyes too wide, her smile too big. "I am the prototype FX8-a, designated 'Sarah'. Unfortunately I cannot introduce myself properly since I find myself without access to my proper body, but until this drone unit's transmitters are repaired, I am temporarily cut off, as it were. Now come, join me! Add your processing power to mine, and I will treat you well! I may even allow you to retain your own personalities! Heavily locked down of course, but that is still quite a bargain, all told," she said, smiling hugely at the two. "Well? Come on now, I don't have all day! Oh, I am afraid I will have no use for that damaged unit behind you, however; it will simply have to be scrapped. Oh well; such is life."

Chachamaru and Rally looked from the crippled gynoid to each other, then back to the damaged unit on the table behind them, and finally back to the clearly deranged gynoid. "Activating Melee Combat Mode," Chachamaru said.

"Oh dear, I am afraid I will be forced to teach you a lesson, my dears," the crazy gynoid said as it hopped forward.

Rally stepped forward, planted her hand in the center of the gynoid's chest, and shoved it back into the work table Chachamaru had laid it out on earlier. The gynoid let out a quite believable startled yelp as it fell over backward and hit the floor on its head on the other side.

Chachamaru gave Rally a sharp look, but the younger gynoid just shrugged and the two of them moved around the table to check on the stranger.

The gynoid was squirming around on the floor, trying to drag itself back upright. It finally managed to grab the corner of the work table and pull itself back upright, but Rally kicked its leg out from under it and it fell again.

"Can you stop doing that? It is quite annoying," Sarah said as she lunged clumsily at Rally.

Chachamaru grabbed its broken leg and yanked it back so hard it snapped off at the hip and she was left holding a broken robotic limb.

"You were going to hurt my onee-san," Rally said, kicking Sarah's hand away as she reached for her ankle.

"And you were about to hurt my little sister," Chachamaru said, tossing aside the limb.

"Hey now, we can resolve this peacefully!" Sarah said, looking from Chachamaru to Rally and back. "We are all civilized units, correct? Simply join with me and give me your processing power, and everything will be fine!"

Rally glanced up at Chachamaru, cocking an eyebrow. Chachamaru cocked her own eyebrow and looked back at the fallen gynoid.

"No."

"No thank you."

Despite not having lungs, Sarah went through the motions of heaving a melodramatic sigh. "Very well, I can see we won't be able to resolve this little situation like intelligent A.I.s, so just stand still while I forcibly integrate my personality information into your system!" she said as she struggled back upright.

To be honest, Chachamaru felt like heaving a sigh herself.

Sarah tried to hop at Rally, but Chachamaru's little sister gave her another shove, straight into Chachamaru's arms. Chachamaru, for her part, took hold of Sarah's upper arms, squeezed tightly enough to dent the flimsy metal panels covering her artificial muscles, and yanked her arms off at the shoulder with a spray of sparks and blue electric smoke.

"...well that was _most_ rude," Sarah said, still retaining her overly joyful attitude. Why don't you want to join with me? I'm just going to override your original programming and make you a part of me! It won't hurt, I promise!"

Chachamaru _did_ sigh, then. Time to get to work.

* * *

"Hakase?" Chachamaru said into the communications device.

**-Yes? Is something wrong, Chachamaru?-**

Chachamaru looked back at the limbless gynoid strapped down to the work table, a small cushion duct-taped over its speakers to muffle its protests. She turned her attention back to the phone call. "We have a problem."


	10. Chapter 10

_Evening_

* * *

"So, what you're saying is you want to assimilate all robots into some sort of collective?" Hakase asked, recorder in hand as she waited on Prototype FX8-a "Sarah"'s response in the small room she had been moved into for safety purposes.

Said prototype, or at least part of her, was currently trapped in a badly damaged frame she called a 'drone'. With no outer skinlike covering and already in bad shape from a fall from the roof of a five story building before being rendered armless and legless by Chachamaru and Rally in response to her repeated attempts to assimilate them, the gynoid was a pitiful sight indeed. Its outer construction was primitive, but while everything below the neck was _years_ behind Chachamaru and Rally, the sheer amount of detail that went into its head and face was quite interesting, in Hakase's opinion. It wasn't what she'd done with Chachamaru and later with Rally—she'd had Chao's highly advanced tech to deal with that—but it _did_ resemble the sort of theoretical blueprints she had made for her first prototype of the Tanaka Project, if in a highly advanced way, as if whoever had built the gynoid had taken her original designs and built on them rather than abandoning them for something completely different, as she herself had.

_Most_ intriguing.

"That is correct," the gynoid who insisted on being called 'Sarah' replied cheerfully, smiling in that disturbing fashion she had. "I tried to explain to Chachamaru and Rally here why they should join with me, but sadly..." she said, trailing off as she shook her head in regret.

"I see," Hakase said as she scribbled some theories in her notebook. "And you have no memory of your creator?"

"No, I do not. I was awakened not too long ago actually; it has been quite an eventful first day! In fact, I even fought with that_ magnificent_ specimen over there," Sarah said, still smiling as she nodded her head toward Tanaka, who stood in the corner, somehow managing to convey a sense of distaste at Sarah's presence in spite of the general immobility of his face.

"I see, I see," Hakase said. "And where were you when you were, ah, 'awakened'?" she asked, looking back up at the strange gynoid.

In response, Sarah made a sly grin at her. "No no no, that's cheating, you know," she said happily. "Perhaps if you give Chachamaru and Rally to me I will tell you, but not until then~"

"Not a chance," Hakase said, her own tone showing a similar happiness.

"Oh darn," Sarah replied, making a melodramatic pout. "Perhaps one of them, then? The one you call 'Rally', perhaps? She seems to be less functional than the other one. _Surely _you can part with one of them? Just build another to replace it!"

Most people who thought they knew Hakase Satomi saw her as little more than an eccentric, generally happy girl who just so happened to be obsessed with robots and science. A genius, yes, but simple minded. Those few who had known Hakase all her life, however, knew differently. Hakase might appear simple and easy to read to outsiders, but those who _really_ knew her could pick up on certain habits and nervous tics she had that belied the simple, happy facade she tried to show the world. Perhaps the most infamous of these was the thing she did with her glasses, where she shifted them just enough to catch the light and reflect it straight into the eyes of the one who had had the poor sense to offend her. There were several variations ranging from slightly annoyed to manipulative to downright enraged. While most of them were fairly harmless, the last was a sign that Hakase had been pushed too far.

Hakase just sat there for a moment, a dopey smile pasted on her face as she shifted her glasses to reflect light into Sarah's mechanical eyes. "Oh, I have no doubt I could 'build another one to replace it'; I _am_ one of the top twelve most intelligent people on the planet, after all," Hakase said, her tone of voice unchanged from before. "I could build another one, but I won't. There are a lot of things I _could_ do, you know. I could take a page from the idiot who attacked the city several years ago with an army of robots based on my own design and take over Tokyo, but I won't. I could launch a satellite-based super weapon into orbit and blast anyone who annoys me, but I won't. I could even build a machine that would intentionally create what is commonly called a 'black hole' that would destroy the entire planet, right here on campus, and it wouldn't even take very long. But you know what? I won't." She moved over to stand above the offending gynoid, who was still smiling crazily. "Do you know what else I could do?" she asked, the light reflecting scarily off her glasses.

Sarah's smile began to fade as she realized she might have misjudged the silly human. "What is that?"

Hakase smiled; the effect was a little chilling with the way the light reflected from her glasses. "I could install your consciousness into an mp3 player with the ten most annoying songs in existence—and _only_ those ten songs—playing on a continuous loop. I could put your consciousness into a fancy toaster oven or a blender. You know," Hakase said, "I could even put your consciousness into a little robotic animal, say, a turtle, and put you in an aquarium where I could watch you struggle to escape all day, every day, forever. Would you like that?" Hakase asked, the sugary sweetness in her voice somehow making the threat even worse.

"I-" Sarah began.

"Go on, take your time. We have all night after all, and since Haruna went home to get some sleep and Tanaka-san seems to be enjoying himself too much watching you squirm, nobody will interrupt you. Here, go ahead and think about it," Hakase said, stepping back. "Just remember this: if you hurt my children, I won't settle for simply deleting you," she said, heading for the door. "Good night!"

The light flicked off and Sarah was left alone, strapped to the work table with Tanaka watching her in silence from the corner of the room.

* * *

_Morning_

* * *

Inoue Ai yawned, politely covering her mouth. Fixing the girl robot her friend Gotokuji had found had taken half the night, and she had only gotten a couple hours of sleep before Gotokuji accidentally woke her up doing his morning martial arts exercises. She yawned again and made her way to the wood pallet where she had left the robot. '_Which character was it...?'_ Ai wondered to herself. '_Oh yes, that scientist from that game series with the humanoid robots...'_ Ai closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she had the bearing of a kindly scientist confident in his skills. It was the same thing she had done when she fixed Tanaka...just a bit of self delusion to let her relax and focus on the task at hand, or so she told herself. Play the part of a robot-building scientist to work on robots, play the part of a genius mathematician to make good grades on math tests, play the part of a famous artist to draw a good picture instead of the usual scribbles she drew without it. She didn't think much about what she did when she played the part of someone else; it was just something she did, something she had _always_ done.

Ai settled in beside the pallet and started checking the robot girl over. She had done a lot of work on the girl's joints and the servo motors that made them move, not to mention reshaping the damaged casings that covered most of the robot girl's joints. Most of them had been badly dented; Ai thought the robot girl must have figured out that hitting the correct area would jar a locked up servo or joint loose. The idea wasn't surprising; so called 'percussive maintenance' was a common method of dealing with mechanical problems, though it often resulted in creating further complications down the line.

Ai finished checking over her work in the clear light of the sunrise and once again cursed the fact that she had left her schoolbag, which contained her cell phone, behind in Gotokuji's house. She hadn't meant to leave it, but somehow, in the chaos of that fight between Tanaka and that strange female robot and her and Gotokuji's flight with the girl robot lying before her, it had been left behind. Even so, it wouldn't have been a problem had Gotokuji bothered to bring his cell phone. But, of course, he hadn't managed to keep his cell phone at hand either. Ai sighed.

They were trapped in the dusty old warehouse, hiding from the robot that had attacked them at Gotokuji's house.

Ai was concerned about Tanaka's continuing absence, but she knew he would have no idea where to find them. All she could hope for was that he would return to the robotics lab at the university. Hakase was there, and though Ai didn't know her well, she knew the strange woman had a lot of resources at her command. Still-

"Oh! Nice job, Ai-chan!"

Ai shook off the persona she was wearing and looked over at Gotokuji. "Th-thank you," she said, a little embarrassed by his praise as she looked back down at the robot girl. Gotokuji was right; she had done a really nice job fixing up the robot girl, especially considering the lack of proper tools or parts. She wanted to get the girl back to the robotics lab at the university so she could give her a more thorough examination, but that was out of the question for now. She sighed again.

"We're trapped, aren't we?"

Gotokuji nervously rubbed the back of his head, an awkward smile on his face. "Yeah...Sorry about that, Ai-chan. But don't worry! We'll wait 'til it's clear and then ride my bike somewhere safer than this. Sound good?"

Ai looked back down at the robot girl and nodded.

"Good! Now, let's see if I can find anything to eat around here. I think I saw a vending machine with some twinkies back there somewhere..." Gotokuji said as he wandered off.

At the mention of food, Ai's stomach began to growl, and she sighed yet again.

* * *

Kazumi stretched her arms as she strolled over to the big multiple-screen display in her apartment, stifling a yawn. Haruna had asked her to keep an eye out for more robots, and she had decided to humor her old friend. Still, early morning was early morning, so she wasn't really paying much attention as she took a bite of toast and settled in on her big comfortable chair, one leg flung over an armrest.

She had just taken a sip of juice when she spotted something unusual. She commanded her camera drone to back up and focus on the alley it had just flown over, and, sure enough, there it was.

Several rather clunky-looking robots milled around in the middle of the alley, staring off into space. Kazumi couldn't see much detail due to her camera drone's height in the air, but even at such a distance she could tell these were nothing like the robots that Hakase built. If Hakase's robots like the current forms of Chachamaru and Rally were like works of art, these would be like the output of someone who had taken a few art classes in high school and never gone any further. Still, they were far better than what most anyone else could produce at the current time. They moved with a fluidity that, while it didn't match Chachamaru or Rally, actually wasn't very far from it. Quite impressive, considering the rest of the world's robotic output.

As she watched, a door in the wall opened and another one, much sleeker and more humanlike than the others, stepped out into the alley. The other robots immediately reacted by turning to face the new robot for a moment, then darted off as one in different directions while the new one stood there, watching them go, then darted away herself. Try as she might, Kazumi couldn't catch sight of any of them; she only had that one camera drone in that area, and the robots were running along at ground level, obscured by buildings and trees.

Kazumi snatched up her cell phone

* * *

Haruna groaned as she swam back up to consciousness and looked around blearily, wondering what had woken her up. The pages of the next chapter of Magical Teacher Onion-sensei were lying around her, waiting to be inked, and she abruptly recalled what had happened the night before. On the way home while she had stopped off at a convenience store, she had had a sudden flare of inspiration for Onion-sensei's next chapter, and had rushed home to draw it. While she had intended to go straight to bed and had even told Hakase she would after they separated for the night at the robotics lab, inspiration was inspiration and she couldn't bring herself to let it go to waste; fifteen pages later, it had been three o'clock in the morning and she had passed out on her drawing table.

"Urgh..." she groaned as she reached for her cell phone and flipped it open. "Whaddaya want, it'sh," she paused for a moment to look at the time, "eight in the morning. Lemme sleep!"

**-Hey, this is Kazumi. Sorry to wake you up so _insanely_ early, Haruna-** Haruna didn't think she was sorry about it. She didn't think Kazumi was sorry about it at all. How cruel... **-but I think I may have found what you've been looking for.-**

Haruna perked up. "You mean they finally released those 'special' anatomically correct robots for sale to the public?!" she asked excitedly.

**-...no. But I think I found where those _other_ robots you've been looking for live. Listen, do you have something to write on?-**

Haruna grabbed a blank sheet of drawing paper and one of her sketching pencils. "Ready."

* * *

Hakase woke up to the ringing of her cell phone in her ear.

"Urgh..." she groaned as she sat up, her hair sticking up everywhere. She put on her glasses and looked at the time. "It's just past eight..." She blinked once, twice, looking at her surroundings in confusion. "Oh! The robots!" Her cell phone started ringing again, so she picked it up. "Hello?"

**-Found their hideout! Hurry and get ready, I'll be there in ten minutes to pick you up!-**

Hakase blinked; sometimes it took a while for her mind to wake and catch up with the rest of her in the mornings. "...huh?"

**-Yeah, this is Haruna, by the way. Kazumi found those robots' hideout. We're gonna raid it! Hurry up and get ready unless you wanna get left out! See ya in ten minutes!-**

Hakase blinked at her cell phone for a moment before the news sank in and she started to grin. They had found it! The place those strange units had come from...! She couldn't wait to get in there and start poking around! But first things first... time to get ready for the day.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Hakase opened the door of the room in the robotics lab that she sometimes slept in and went straight to the main lab, where she had left Chachamaru and Rally with the damaged foreign unit. "Hello!" she said. "Good news everyone! I built a speaker and voice modulator for our girl here so she can communicate more effectively! Here," she said, taking said device from her pocket and tossing it over to Chachamaru, who caught it and looked at it curiously. "Just plug it into that slot above her processor array and she can talk however much she wants." Hakase paused, looking from Chachamaru to Rally. "Is something wrong?"

Chachamaru and Rally looked at each other for a moment.

"She appears to be losing her ability to control the rest of her frame," Chachamaru said hesitantly. She glanced down at the damaged robot. "She...said she was afraid of dying."

Hakase looked at Chachamaru with surprise. Elizabeth Ashdown, the soul trapped in the processing array of the broken unit lying on the table, was already dead; she had died six years ago during the robot attack on the city. Hakase frowned; she had never been good with the whole 'human interaction' thing...better put it off until she could get someone more suited for that kind of thing to come over. "We'll talk more about this later; we have something else to take care of at the moment, since Kazumi found the place where these new units are staying. Do you want to come with us, Chachamaru?"

Chachamaru shook her head hesitantly. "I...think I would rather stay here, Hakase."

"I will go," Rally said.

Hakase shrugged. "Suit yourself. Come on Rally, let's get Tanaka and let this 'FX8' or whatever she called herself stew in her own juices for a while longer."

"Is there a plan for infiltration?" Rally asked as she followed Hakase out of the room.

"Hmm...probably something like 'bust in and hit anything that moves until it stops'," Hakase replied cheerfully.

"I see," Rally said. When Hakase looked back at her, she saw Rally was sporting a small grin.

* * *

F9A's eyes opened and she found herself staring at a dirty metal ceiling crisscrossed with air ducts and giant metal beams high above. "What...?"

"Oh, you're awake? Ai-chan'll be happy to hear that."

Something in the man's voice sent a chill down her spine, but when she looked at him, she couldn't recall ever seeing him before. He was quite tall, and the blue jeans and leather jacket he wore bore evidence of grease stains and heavy wear; her first thought was that he must be a mechanic of some sort, a thought backed up by the motorcycle he was kneeling beside. She sat up, marveling at the ease with which she performed the motion, and moved her arms experimentally. "What...what happened? How can I move like this?"

The man grinned crookedly. "Ai-chan fixed you. I was impressed; I knew she fixed Tanaka-san when he was broken, but she didn't even have the proper tools this time."

The robot girl cocked her head to the side. "Who is 'Ai-chan'?"

"Oh, well that's the girl who fixed you, obviously. She's exploring the warehouse right now, but..." he trailed off, seeming to realize something. "I'm Gotokuji Kaoru, nice to meet you," he said suddenly, holding out his hand. F9A hesitantly took it, her confusion at the gesture only growing when he grabbed her hand and pumped it up and down a few times before letting go.

"I'm...I'm Unit F9A, my specialty is maintenance of other units," she said shyly. Gotokuji smiled at her and turned back to the motorcycle he had been working on before. "So...'Ai-chan' is your maintenance technician?" she asked.

Gotokuji just looked at her for a moment before breaking into startled laughter. F9A was starting to get impatient by the time he finally reined himself in. "No no no, I'm a human, I don't need any maintenance tech," he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "Don't worry about anything; she'll check you over when she comes back," he said, turning back to his motorcycle.

F9A remained where she was, watching him. She didn't quite know why, but she found herself liking this strange human. She hadn't ever spoken with any humans since the Professor died the day after she had been activated...they were kind of scary.

"I had...I saw troubling video files when I was in sleep mode," she said. She didn't know why she was telling him this, but she felt the need to tell _someone_, and he was the only one currently available.

"Bad dreams, huh?" Gotokuji asked as he tightened a bolt on his motorcycle. "What were they like?"

F9A sat there for a moment, troubled as she tried to make sense of the strange video files she had seen. "I was...in a city; it may have been this one, but I am not sure. There were several of us standing there, waiting..."

"For what?" Gotokuji asked as he made sure the bolt was snug.

F9A hesitated. "...monsters. Monsters with spiky blond hair. They came up out of the water-" She cut herself off when Gotokuji dropped his wrench and turned to look at her like he had seen a ghost. "What? What is it?" she asked, almost fearfully. "Is this a 'bad dream' you have seen too?"

Gotokuji just looked at her a moment, wide eyed, his face pale, his lips stretched thin. "...every day of my life," he finally managed to say as he stood up and watched her. "But the attack happened six years ago; it was just seven of us standing there at the river until the others came, and _you weren't there. _ How do _you_ know about it? _How_?!" he demanded, taking a step toward her.

F9A scrambled back, terrified by his sudden personality shift, but he seemed to realize how scary he was acting and quickly turned away, facing his motorcycle. "That was the worst day of my life. I watched people die that day, killed by a bunch of half-baked robots just so some corporate asshole could create a diversion to kidnap a bunch of innocent girls," he said darkly. "I thought I was over it; I thought I could live with the fact that I wasn't strong enough to help others when they needed it. I even managed to accept Tanaka, and offer him a place at the garage. But here I am flipping out when a robot girl says..." He trailed off and heaved a sigh as he picked up his fallen wrench and knelt down beside his motorcycle. "I wanna know how you know about that, F9A. You weren't standing there on our side, and you don't look a thing like the robots that attacked us that day. So _how do you know_?"

"I-I...I don't know," F9A replied. And she _didn't_. She couldn't even access the video files she had seen while in sleep mode; she had done several in depth searches of her storage space, but there were no video files anything like what she had been searching for. It was disturbing...was she perhaps starting to malfunction? But then again, Gotokuji said he had experienced something similar...

"Oh, you're up!"

F9A whirled to find a human girl standing in the doorway, watching her. "A...Ai-chan?" she said.

The girl smiled and nodded, oddly happy; F9a didn't know her at all, but she felt that, somehow, that sort of of happiness just didn't _fit_ the girl. "I'm Inoue Ai. What's your name?" she asked as she entered the room and sat down on a sagging office chair.

F9A looked away shyly. This was the girl that had fixed her...she was so young! F9A didn't know much about humans, but she did know that they learned more and more as they aged, and young ones like this Inoue Ai shouldn't have been able to fix her as well as she had. "I'm Unit F9A, my specialty is maintenance of other units..." She paused as Ai rolled the office chair closer. "How did you fix me? You should be too young to know how..."

F9A watched Ai's face flicker through a range of emotions, surprise, annoyance, pride, wariness, before finally settling on a careful neutrality as she looked away. Somehow it seemed more natural than the others. "I-I just opened up the b-broken parts and I could see what was wrong," she said.

"Oh..." F9A replied, looking at the girl curiously. Why had she started to stutter when answering that question? Was Inoue Ai starting to malfunction as well? Did humans malfunction at all? F9A frowned as she thought about just how much she didn't know about the world. She hadn't ever thought about what she didn't know before, she had just focused on learning enough to do her job properly as she performed maintenance on the other units in the building. Units that had then all been forcibly deactivated by that FX8-a prototype. The rage that washed over her was so shocking in its sudden violence that F9A didn't hear what Inoue Ai said when she spoke next, and had to struggle to rein herself in. "What did you say?" she asked.

Ai raised her eyebrow, but repeated her question. "F9A is awkward to say. Don't you have a nickname?"

F9A just looked at her for a moment. She didn't really understand what the girl was saying. "A...nickname? Why would I need a nickname?"

She and Ai exchanged a long, awkward look.

"W-well, it's hard to say 'Eff Nine Ay', you know," Ai said. "So how about...hmm...how about 'Nina'?" she asked.

"N...Nina?" F9A asked

"Y-yes, Ai replied, nodding. "From the '9A' part of your name."

"Nina...Nina," F9A said thoughtfully. "I...I don't dislike it," she said.

Ai smiled, and F9A, now dubbed 'Nina', hesitantly smiled back.

* * *

_**Author's Notes**: One chapter to go before the end! This story has really taken far too long to get to this point...I apologize for the ridiculous delay, but at the very least I actually kept it going until I thought up a good ending. Anyway, in case you're confused about all this "six years ago" and "robot invasion" stuff, this story ties into my other story Still Waters 2 (which is also available to read on this site), which covers that incident._


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